Caramelized Banana & Coffee Cake with a Caramel-Cream Filling

Surprise! Bet you didn’t expect to find me posting anything today, seeing as I’m jetting off to the wonderfully sunny city of Zadar (it’s in Croatia) in the early hours of tomorrow. Alas, I couldn’t leave you hanging for a whole week with no new recipes, what kind of person do you think I am? So I came up with a plan a while back & boy has it been hard not to mention it! Today is the first day of a whole week of banana related recipes that I made ahead & saved for this exact moment in time. Are you as excited as I am?

Let me start from the beginning. About two weeks ago, The Boyf & I were browsing around his local convenient store when I stumbled across several bags of browning bananas. I immediately thought “yay! an excuse to make banana bread!”, we picked out a bag & headed for the till. & here’s the best part: the bag was only 75 cents. Eight bananas for 75 cents! Needless to say, I was overjoyed – super cheap bananas AND a delicious banana bread waiting just around the corner. 

It only occurred to me when we were eating dinner that I should have gotten a second bag that I could chop up & put in the freezer to use in smoothies. Back to the convenient store we went, chose another bag of bananas & headed to the till. This is where it gets kind of embarrassing.. It was the same cashier that served us the first time. & of course he remembered us – a girl still in her work clothes & a boy with long red hair buying a bunch of brown bananas. I’d say we stood out. & it gets worse. He didn’t just scan in our browned goods & get it over & done with, he raised his eyebrows & said “you like bananas, ey?”, or something to that effect. I can’t be sure, I was too busy trying to find the nearest escape route. 

It doesn’t end there. Oh no, my life is just full of extremely prolonged embarrassing moments that may as well be never ending. All this banana purchasing happened during the days Zadar was being planned. So after buying all those bananas, the Banana Week idea hit me & I decided to use them all for baking. So obviously I needed more bananas if I was going to make five days worth of baked goods. So we went back for more bananas the very next day. & yes, you guessed it, it was the same cashier. I don’t think I have ever been more mortified in my whole life. It was awful. 

It was worth it though, I ended up with a bunch of exciting banana baked goods that I know you guys are going to love. I’m starting the week off with this Caramelized Banana Coffee & Cream Cake, simply because it’s the first thing I made with all my bananas. The bananas in the this case are actually baked into the bottom of the cake layer in slices, rather than being mushed up & incorporated, which I like, because it gives the cake an interesting layer. Also, the caramelization of the the bananas happens while it’s baking in the oven, handy dandy or what? There were only two things that went wrong with this cake: 1) I’m a coffee person, so the scant two teaspoons simply weren’t enough for me & 2) I slightly burned the sugar for the cream filling, which was a shame, but I don’t think it ruined the overall taste. However, you regular people out there who don’t drink coffee by the bucket full & are always vigilant should have no problems. Happy baking!

Serves 6-8 

Ingredients 

• 175g butter, plus extra for greasing
• 50g brown sugar
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon, lemon juice
• 225g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons strong black coffee
• 175g self-raising flour
• 150ml cream
• Icing sugar, for dusting

Method 

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C & grease & line the base of two 18cm sandwich tins. Grease the lined base liberally with butter & then sprinkle the brown sugar on top. Slice one banana into each tin & arrange over the sugar. Sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of lemon juice & set aside. 
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter with 175g of the sugar until light & fluffy. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs & coffee together & add to the butter mixture in small amounts, beating we between each addition. Fold in the flour mixture. 
3. Divide the mixture between the tins & level it out over the sliced bananas. 
4. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until risen & springy to the touch. Remove from the over & cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool fully.
5. To make the caramel-cream filling, place the remaining sugar in a heavy-based pan over a gentle heat until it melts, stirring from time to time. Once melted, continue to cook the sugar without stirring until it starts to caramelize & then remove immediately. DO NOT LET IT SIT THERE FOR TOO LONG, trust me, I burnt it. 
6. Quickly add in the remaining lemon juice & 4 tablespoons of the cream & mix. Cool for 10 minutes. 
7. Whip the remaining cream in a mixing bowl until it stands in peaks. Fold the cooled caramel-cream mix into the whipped cream & use to sandwich the two cakes together. 
8. Dust with icing sugar to make it look pretty.