Caramel and Banana Cake

I was rudely woken at 7 on a Sunday morning by a hungry daughter, who was very specific about what she was hungry for – bread and butter (not too demanding i know, but 7 in the morning on a Sunday is like the crack of dawn and i was intending to give her a banana). I buttered a slice and gave it to her and then was up and couldn’t go back to bed. When I got into the kitchen, I got a blast of some awesome ripe banana smell (i love bananas). So I decided to make best use of the early hours and bake a banana bread, so I did a quick search on various food sites and came across the caramel chips and banana cake recipe and  thought why not!

I tweaked it a bit so i could use what ingredients I had available at home and also did not use exact measures…

What went into making it -

• 2 tbsp of sugar with a splash of water, boiled till the sugar melts, thickens and becomes golden brown. Pour it into a baking sheet or anything that won’t burn – I used a cookie tray so i could get a thin layer.
• While its cooling whisk together 3 tbsp of butter, with about the same amount of powdered sugar (castor sugar) to a fluffy, feathery consistency, add 3 eggs, 1 and a half cups of flour, a tsp of baking soda, 2 ripe bananas, 2 tbsp of ground almonds, and 3 tbsp of curds. Whisk till smooth. The batter does seems too liquidy, but it doesn’t matter
• S and I used a rolling pin to smash and shatter the cooled and hardened caramel and added this to the mixture. Poured it into 2 baking dishes (S has her own baking dish). We baked it till it was nice and brown (don’t worry if you see liquid still bubbling on the sides, thats just the melted caramel, it hardens when the cake cools)

Baking – look at that lovely caramel chunks…

Baked

and served

S loving it…

The only problem that I faced, is that all that lovely caramel sank to the bottom and formed a layer on the cake, which was fine by me and more importantly, by S.