Cake Trails #2 Caramel Banana Bundt Cake

Week Two of our Cake Trail took us to Cuckoo's Bakery, who bake possibly the best cupcakes in Edinburgh. One of their cupcakes even won them an award! I encourage you to read all about our visit here on Eve's blog, but the short version is, these are really really good cupcakes. As in, I took a box home.

In there though, I chose a banana and caramel cupcake, and I gave it a strong 2/3 (cake, filling and icing making up the three). The cake was a delicious banana bread type cupcake, and you could really taste the banana coming through. The middle of the cupcake was filled with salted caramel, another absolute winner. But for me, the icing was a bit of a let down - it was really really sweet and it tasted like what banana *should* taste like, rather than what it actually tastes like - do you know what I mean?

So for this weeks inspired by bake, I stuck with the banana cake and and the caramel sauce, but I changed the icing to a tangy cream cheese icing. I also opted for one big bundt cake, rather than cupcakes. There are two reasons for this. 1) I did cupcakes last post, and 2) I got a bundt tin for Christmas off Ben's parents and hadn't played with it yet. Good, strong reasoning I think. 

This cake was an absolute hit with my friends, and I'm really pleased because although in my head the cream cheese icing was going to work with the banana bread and caramel, I wasn't 100% convinced it was going to come off in reality. 

Caramel Banana Bundt Cake

Cake

270g Light Brown Sugar

2 Eggs
200g Ripe Bananas, Mashed
280g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
140g Melted Unsalted Butter

Caramel Sauce

200g Sugar
90g Salted Butter
120ml of Double Cream

Cream Cheese Icing

225g FULL FAT (this matters) Cream Cheese

85g Unsalted Butter

300g Icing Sugar

1tsp Vanilla Extract (optional, but coming from a not big vanilla fan, it's nice in this)

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease your bundt tin
2. Beat the sugars and the eggs together until light and airy
3. Mix in the mashed bananas
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together, then gently fold in to the wet ingredients
5. Finally add the melted butter and pour into your prepared tin
7. Bake for around 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean

8. Whilst the cake is baking, make your caramel.

9. Heat the sugar in a pan, stirring all the time until it forms clumps, then melts down into an amber liquid.
10. As soon as you have the liquid, add the butter - it'll splash everywhere, so watch out!
11. Once the butter melts, add the double cream, stirring alllll the time. Once again, watch out, because there will be lots of bubbling.
12. Let it bubble for about a minute, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

13. Once the caramel and the cake are both completely cool, make the cream cheese icing by mixing the butter with the cream cheese and vanilla then gradually adding the icing sugar. 

14. Pipe the cream cheese icing onto the cake and then follow by piping the caramel.

Nutella Swirl Banana Bread Muffins

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I shared a picture of my fossilised bananas with you? I'd said that banana bread was about to happen, but I decided to mix things up a bit, and went for banana bread muffins instead, with a little swirl of Nutella in the top. The idea was that I could freeze them individually, away from immediate temptation, and then whip them out when I fancied one.

In the name of honesty I have to tell you that this did not happen - they were demolished pretty quickly (although I did take some to work to share, so it wasn't tooo bad). I have since managed to make and freeze some brownies though (so proud!)

I braved the muffin tray without wrappers, primarily because I didn't have any muffin cases, and I was so happy with how they turned out with just a little bit of butter in each hole. Don't they look cute naked?

The recipe is really easy, and because they're so much smaller than a normal loaf of banana bread they cook much quicker. If you have the self control, it is also really easy to pop them in the freezer - no slicing means no drying out, so the defrosted result is much tastier. It's a win win. The recipee comes from the Hummingbird Bakery.

Nutella Swirl Banana Bread Muffins

200g Light Brown Sugar
70g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
200g Ripe Bananas, Mashed
280g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
140g Melted Unsalted Butter

Nutella (how much is how much you fancy!)

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease a twelve hole muffin pan
2. Beat the sugars and the eggs together until light and airy
3. Mix  in the mashed bananas
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together, then gently fold in to the wet ingredients
5. Finally add the melted butter.
6. Split the mixture evenly between the muffin pan, and then swirl the Nutella in to the top of the mix
7. Bake for 25 minutes until risen, and a knife comes out clean in the middle