I should guiltily admit that this cake was actually made for my very lovely brother-in-law, Gary, who celebrated his 27th birthday on the 15th. This was supposed to be his birthday cake but since I didn’t get to see him as I’d expected at the weekend, I generously told Bob it could be his Fathers day cake.

Before icing:

After icing:

You will need:
2 bananas (the riper the better)
170g caster sugar
170g self raising flour
170g butter
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease & line a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Slice up your bananas, place in a bowl and add the other ingredients.
3. Using a handheld whisk or blender, mix up the ingredients until completely blended and your bananas are mushed to bits.
4. Pour the mixture into your tin, place in the oven and bake for an hour until your loaf is done.

For this loaf and the two cakes which I’ll be blogging later in the week, I used the cream cheese icing from Nigella Lawson’s Guinness cake recipe. This made enough to generously cover all three cakes so bear that in mind!

You will need:
300g cream cheese (like philadelphia – I use the generic version)
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream

Whip the cream cheese until smooth, add the sieved icing sugar and whip after every few spoonfuls. Add the cream and mix until you have a spreadable consistency with no lumps of sugar. Using a spatula, put a very thin coating of this icing over your cake – this will seal in the crumbs. Once you’ve done this, load up your spatula and frost the cake. Slice and munch!

Posted under baking, knitting, recipes

I feel a bit of a cheat posting this recipe for banoffee pie because I’m sure I’m the last person in the world to make it, but it’s just so ridiculously easy that I feel it’s my duty to tell you all how to make it yourselves. As a word of warning this is so sweet that even I, the self-confessed Queen of the sweet toothed, only managed to eat a small slice before drinking a massive glass of milk.

I used the following in a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin. For a bigger but shallower pie use a 24cm tin and double the hobnob base.

300g packet of chocolate hobnobs (digestives will do just as well)
Butter
2 x 397g can of condensed milk
4 bananas
Small carton double cream
Sprinkles, mini smarties or suchlike for the top

Firstly you’ll want to make your toffee. This can be done days in advance but the cans will need to have cooled before you start making the pie so at the very latest you’ll want to have finished boiling them a good few hours before making this.
To make your toffee, put the unopened unpierced cans of condensed milk into a big saucepan and cover them with cold water. Bring the water to the boil and leave for 4 hours, remembering to top the saucepan up with boiling water if the water level drops. It’s VERY important that the pan doesn’t boil dry as your cans could explode if this happens. Please be very conscious of this.

Put the packet of hobnobs into a food bag and batter it with a rolling pin until it looks a bit crushed. Pour the crumbs into a microwaveable mixing bowl and finish the job so your hob nobs are now a pile of crumbs. The bonus of making this with the chocolate hobnobs is that the chocolate should hold your mixture together pretty well when it’s melted so put 4-5 small knobs of butter around the top of your crumb mix and microwave for 20-30 seconds until the butter is soft and melting.
Mix the butter into the crumbs – you’re looking for your crumbs to be obviously wet but not swimming in grease. Tip the crumb mix into your tin and press down. Open your cans of condensed milk toffee, put them in a microwaveable dish and give it 20-30 seconds in the microwave to make the toffee a little easier to spread. Spoon the toffee over the top of the biscuit mix and smooth down. Put your tin into the fridge to let the biscuit and toffee set.

About half an hour before you want to eat your pie, slice up four bananas and layer the slices in rows. Whip your double cream until it’s thick and fluffy then carefully spoon across the top, smoothing it carefully so as not to disturb the banana layer. Finally, cover the top with your sprinkles/smarties/sweeties and you should end up with something like this:

This is so easy to make that it’s a great recipe for working with the kids as long as you do the toffee boiling part. Nairn helped me make this – well, I say helped. He stood beside me and licked the spoons! Let me know if you try it.

Posted under baking, recipes, with the kids