This cake was inspired in a spur of a moment. As you can probably imagine, some ripe bananas on lying on the kitchen counter, waiting to be mashed. The problem is, after baking the same quick banana spice cake a hundred times and while I love a good banana bread, I just wanted something a bit fancier. And that’s how I came up with the banana cake recipe, and the idea of filling it with caramel whipped cream came to me when I wanted to make it for my niece’s birthday.
So without further ado; here is the recipe for the cake.
Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup tightly-packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup caster sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup of butter milk
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 large ripe bananas
- 2 cups of all-purpose flour
View this post on Instagram
Directions:
- Start by beating the eggs with an electric mixer on high speed for a few minutes until it doubles in size.
- Add the sugar and the vanilla to the eggs and mix again until they are creamed together.
- Add the butter milk to the mixture. If you don’t have butter milk, just add a tbsp of vinegar to a cup of regular milk and allow it to sit for 10 minutes before use.
- Mash the bananas and add to the mix. Do this step right before adding to the mix to prevent the bananas from from browning.
- In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients gradually while mixing until you have a smooth, creamy mixture. Avoid over mixing the batter.
- Divide the batter between two 20 cm cake pans that have been buttered and lined with parchment paper.
- Bake for 30 minutes on 170 °C, then for another 15 minutes on 150 °C.
- Allow the cakes to cool down completely before adding the filling.
The whipped caramel cream:
Ingredients:
1 cup of caster sugar
6 tbsp cold butter (cubed)
1/2 cup of cream
1 tsp vanilla
salt flakes (optional)
1 cup of cold whipping cream
- In a heavy sauce pan, add 1 cup of sugar and heat on medium heat.
- Don’t stir the sugar until you can see that the edges started melting.
- Once all the sugar is melted and has turned amber-brown, add the cold butter.
- Fully incorporate the butter to the sugar. This could take a few minutes and requires some effort.
- After the butter is fully incorporated, add 1/2 a cup of cream. Be careful as the mix will effervesce.
- Allow the caramel to boil for a couple of minutes then remove from the heat.
- Add the vanilla to the caramel when it’s completely cool.
- In a chilled bowl, add 1 cup of whipping cream, then start whipping until soft peaks form.
- Add the caramel to the whipped cream and continue whipping until you reach a homogeneous mixture.
You can use the caramel cream as a filling between the two layers of cake and then as frosting using an offset spatula. You can use a few walnuts for garnish.