Back in the saddle

After the disaster of the last cake, I was nervous at making another. Which is ridiculous because I love to bake and have rarely, if ever, had a problem.

However, we’re planning a day trip and need cake to go with our flask of coffee, so it was back to the kitchen.

Today’s recipe is Banoffee Cake with Caramel, Chocolate & Banana. It’s a Waitrose recipe card promoting Nestle Carnation Caramel. I’m not usually a Waitrose shopper but a store has opened on my way home from work so I popped in for a nosy.

The recipe follows the traditional creaming of butter and sugar method. Add an egg. Then the Carnation Caramel – trying not to spoon too much straight into your mouth J. Fold in the flour.

Despite the picture of the ingredients, the bananas were actually from the freezer. I’ve never tried freezing bananas before but thought it was worth a try rather than throwing them away. As expected, after defrosting they looked less than appealing - brown and mushy – but worked perfectly well for the recipe. Definitely something to try again.

Lastly, add the chocolate drops. These had been hanging around in my cupboard for an age so that’s another tick against my use-up goal.

Does it ever bug you when TV cooks leave half the mixture in the bowl? Well, no chance of that happening here. The bowl was scraped clean with just a little left for Chickpea to perform the ritual of licking the bowl and spoon.

By this point, I was pretty confident that things were going well. The batter looked how I would expect and had a perfect dropping consistency. Into the oven it went.

An hour later, what would the oven reveal?

Success or failure?

Ta-dah!!

To a great sigh of relief, a perfectly risen, moist, and absolutely scrummy banoffee cake.

This piece didn't last long J

Back in the saddle* and ready for more baking later in my hols.


* As I was baking, this song was running through my head. It’s the version from the film ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ when Tom Hanks' character starts dating again.