Little Box Brownie

A Baking Blog from Melbourne, Australia

Fruit

Caramelised Banana Cake

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I had great intensions of eating these bananas when they where young, yellow and beautiful yet once again I have let them wilt, turn brown and die only to be reborn as an amazing out of this world banana cake. I’m sure you are with me when I say whoooo hooooo banana cake.
The cake is really moist and quite light and fluffy. The cake itself is not overly sweet but the caramel topping makes up for that, it gives the cake an amazing warmth, just what you want in time for winter, mind you it would be perfect all year around. I have to say I am quite impressed with this cake. It was after all a throw anything in to the mixture cake and I think it turned out pretty Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously well, I think the sour cream I added in to the mixture just for the fun of it really worked a treat. Ok so I’m proud as punch go on give it a go.

The trunk that I photographed the cake on is an old trunk that sits in the front of my studio. It was my dad’s old school trunk, it has K Purvis stamped on to the front of it. I’m not quite sure how he moved it cos it weighs a tonne, but he would cart this thing off to boarding school with him back in the day when he was a wee lad:) He said he also took it to sea when he was a cadet engineer, so this trunk has quite literally been around the world. Oh the stories I’m sure it could tell. 🙂

Caramel Banana Cake
 
Topping
 
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup of cream
2 bannans
 
Cake
 
100g butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 ripe bannans 
1/2 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour (gluten free or plain)
 
Pre heat oven to 190C
 
To make the topping, sprinkle the sugar into a 20cm round cake tin, then pour over the cream. Cut up the two bananas into pieces about 3mm thick and lay them over the cream and sugar. Set aside
To make the cake, cream the butter and sugar together. Mash up the banana’s with a fork and add along with the sour cream, vanilla essence and eggs then stir through. Sift in the flour and stir until well combined. Pour over the bananas and bake for 40mins or until cooked.
 
Serve hot straight from the oven.
 
 

Panna Cotta

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Many Moons ago I worked at a hotel where the chef at the time was pretty adventurous for the kind of establishment it was. He would make some amazing dishes and I luckily got to taste test many of them. The Panna Cotta he made was so delicious – I had never tried it before and remember thinking it tasted like ice cream without being frozen. It had that creamy texture, it really was so good. So for todays post, I decided to give this little desert a go and this is my attempt. Personally I think his was better, it just seemed creamier so next time I might change the milk and cream ratio to more cream.

Panna Cotta
 
1 cup cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2 tablespoons boiling water
2 teaspoons gelatine 
 
Place the cream, milk, sugar and vanilla into a saucepan. On a medium temperature, heat until the sugar has dissolves.
In a separate bowl place the boiling water into a separate bowl with the gelatine and stir until dissolved. Pour this into the cream mixture and stir through. Pour into 6 greased moulds and place on a tray. Place this into the fridge until set, approximately 5 hours