Moist banana cake with whipped caramel cream

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:

 

1. 4 eggs
2. 1/2 cup tightly-packed brown sugar
3. 1/2 cup caster sugar
4. 2 tsp vanilla
5. 1 cup of butter milk
6. 1 tsp baking powder
7. 1 tsp baking soda
8. 1/2 tsp salt
9. 3 large ripe bananas
10. 2 cups of all-purpose flour

 

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Directions:

 

1. Start by beating the eggs with an electric mixer on high speed for a few minutes until it doubles in size.
2. Add the sugar and the vanilla to the eggs and mix again until they are creamed together.
3. 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.
4. Mash the bananas and add to the mix. Do this step right before adding to the mix to prevent the bananas from from browning.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients gradually while mixing until you have a smooth, creamy mixture. Avoid over mixing the batter.
7. Divide the batter between two 20 cm cake pans that have been buttered and lined with parchment paper.
8. Bake for 30 minutes on 170 °C, then for another 15 minutes on 150 °C.
9. 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

1. In a heavy sauce pan, add 1 cup of sugar and heat on medium heat.
2. Don’t stir the sugar until you can see that the edges started melting.
3. Once all the sugar is melted and has turned amber-brown, add the cold butter.
4. Fully incorporate the butter to the sugar. This could take a few minutes and requires some effort.
5. After the butter is fully incorporated, add 1/2 a cup of cream. Be careful as the mix will effervesce.
6. Allow the caramel to boil for a couple of minutes then remove from the heat.
7. Add the vanilla to the caramel when it’s completely cool.
8. In a chilled bowl, add 1 cup of whipping cream, then start whipping until soft peaks form.
9. 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.