Banana Toffee Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream

As a keen and frequent baker, I'm not quite sure why I'd never made banana bread/cake before as I love bananas and it's pretty much a failsafe creation. In fact, it almost seems to be a rite of passage recipe for those who begin to pursue an interest in baking. Anyway, when the time came to make a cake for my mum and dad's joint birthday celebrations back in April, I wanted to make something different that I hadn't tried before which would be indulgent but not too complicated. I decided to do a banana cake but with added toffee flavouring, and paired with a brown sugar buttercream and chopped up Caramac and Chomp bars for extra celebration-appropriate banoffee decadence.

I found that the brown sugar buttercream was a bit looser than normal frosting but if you need it to be stiffer just add in some extra icing sugar.

INGREDIENTS

For the cake:

• 225g self-raising flour
• 100g granulated/caster sugar
• 90g dark brown sugar
• 225g butter/margarine
• 2 ripe/over-ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp Lakeland buttery caramel flavouring (optional but delicious)
• 0.5 tsp baking powder

For the buttercream/topping:

• 100g butter
• 100g dark brown sugar + a few pinches for sprinkling
• 100g icing sugar
• Few drops of Lakeland buttery caramel flavouring (again, optional but so good!)
• 2 Chomp bars (or other toffee/caramel chocolate)
• 1 Caramac bar

METHOD

For the cake:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C and line two round baking tins with parchment paper.
2. Whisk the butter/margarine and sugars together in a large mixing bowl until pale then whisk in the eggs,
3. Fold in the flour, mashed bananas, vanilla extract, caramel flavouring and baking powder until a batter of a soft dropping consistency has formed.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tins then pop in the oven and bake for around 20-25 minutes until a cocktail stick inserted into the sponges comes out clean.
5. When baked, leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack before turning them out of the tins. At this stage the sponges can be frozen for decorating at a later date if you wish.

For the buttercream/topping:

1. Place the butter, caramel flavouring and brown sugar in a bowl then whisk while gradually adding the icing sugar until a smooth mixture has formed.
2. Spread half of the buttercream on one of the sponges then sandwich the other on top, then spread the rest of buttercream on the top layer.
3. Chop the Caramac and Chomp bars into small squares using a sharp knife or scissors then place them on top of the cake before finishing off with a few sprinkles of brown sugar.

I also used this recipe to make cupcakes to take to my old workfriends :) The above quantities will yield about 12-15 cupcakes.

World Baking Day!

Just a quick post to say that my submission to World Baking Day's 'Victory Bakes' on Twitter received a rosette :) My contribution was the birthday cake I made for my best friend's birthday last July - Victoria sponge filled with jam and fresh cream and decorated with white chocolate finger biscuits, strawberries and purple glitter, adorned with shortbread hearts as a finishing touch. I chose this cake because a) although it was actually very easy to make, I think it looks the most impressive and professional of all my bakes, and b) World Baking Day is about baking for someone you love and my bestie Danielle is one of the people I love most in this world!

On the actual day (Sunday 17th May) I made some rhubarb & custard and peanut butter & chocolate thumbprint cookies for my parents and their friends who came over for dinner - recipe will be up on the blog soon :) 

Did you participate in World Baking Day? If so, what did you make and who was the lucky recipient?

Lemon Crunch Cupcakes

Isn't it funny how sometimes the most hurried and improvised of culinary creations turn out the most delicious? Like these yummy little cakes - they came about almost by accident but I'm glad they did as I'll definitely be making them again, especially now spring is here! I fancied making some cupcakes that were quick and straightforward but a bit different from ones I'd made recently, and I remembered I had a couple of lemons in the freezer (yes, you can freeze lemons! The insides go quite mushy but they still keep their flavour and juicyness), so I thought I'd have a go at lemon drizzle cakes. I then found that a) my grater was too blunt to grate the lemon zest for the sponge and b) I didn't have any icing sugar. I improvised by adding the juice to the batter instead, convinced that its acidity would stop the cakes from rising or just generally make them taste funny, but they came out beautifully with a subtle zing :) Unable to make icing, I simply created a slapdash mixture of granulated sugar and the rest of the lemon juice and plonked it on the tops of the cupcakes around 5 minutes before they were due to come out of the oven. The result was a lovely sweet but citrussy crunchy topping which is very reminiscent of the traditional pancake topping! You can use as much or as little topping as you like depending on how sweet you want the cakes but you don't need a great deal to get the texture and flavour.

I love how the topping looks like a crisp winter frost!

INGREDIENTS - makes approx. 10-12 cupcakes

For the cakes:

• 125g self-raising flour
• 115g caster/granulated sugar
• 115g butter/margarine
• 2 eggs
• Juice of half a lemon
• Pinch of baking powder

For the topping:

• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• Juice of half a lemon

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees and line a cupcake/muffin baking tray with 12 paper cases.
2. Whisk the butter/margarine together in a large mixing bowl until pale then whisk in the eggs.
3. Fold in the flour, lemon juice and baking powder until a batter of a soft dropping consistency has formed.
4. Drop the mixture into the cake cases using a teaspoon until they're each about two thirds full.
5. Pop in the oven and then prepare the topping by mixing the sugar and remaining lemon juice together roughly in a bowl.
6. After around 8-10 minutes, remove the cakes from the oven and spread the sugar and lemon juice mixture over the tops - this is quite fiddly as it's so sticky but I found the easiest way to do it was using my fingers.
7. Place the cakes back in the oven and bake for a further 5 minutes until a cocktail stick inserted into the sponge comes out clean.
8. When baked, place on a wire rack and leave to cool before enjoying.