Banana Cake

Hi guys!


I have to admit, I'm seriously addicted to Donna Hay's recipes. This week, I've been cooking up a storm. I treated myself to some blueberry muffins and made vanilla cupcakes while I was babysitting two adorable 4 and 7 year-olds. Both recipes are from Donna Hay's "A Cook's Guide". The blueberry muffins are a slightly altered version of her raspberry and white chocolate muffins that you can find on her website. 


I also found the recipe for last week's basic scones by accident, so here it is: http://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/sweets/cakes/basic-scones


This week, I decided to try her banana cake recipe as I love every pastry with banana in it, I'm surely going to make some banana and cinnamon muffins pretty soon. Again, I got the recipe off her website: http://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/sweets/cakes/banana-cake


Here is how mine turned out:

You're only a couple of steps away from your perfect cake:
1) Mix the butter and sugar and whip until getting lighter in color
2) Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well.
3) Add flour and baking powder and beat until combined
4) Stir in the cinnamon, sour cream and mashed banana
5) Pour the dough into a tin and bake


I used a KitchenAid to whip up the dough and followed her instructions. Beating butter and sugar for some time until it gets lighter and adding the eggs one after the other ensures you are ending up with a very fluffy dough and cake in the end. By stirring in the sour cream and banana at the end with a wooden spoon rather than using the machine, you'll make sure your dough does not loose its fluffines. I used a bunt cake tin which worked perfectly, but I know it's rather uncommon in the U.S. Donna uses a fluted ring tin. This is how the dough looked before baking:

The cake was good after exactly 40 minutes of baking. 

While the cake was cooling on a wire rack, I combined the cream and sugar to make the caramel sauce. I kept stirring after I had increased the temperature, otherwise the caramel would have run over the pot. My caramel sauce turned out  lighter, but I assume it would be darker when cooked on higher heat, as I was rather careful not to burn the sugar. My brown sugar wasn't exactly dark brown either which might have added to the color as well. Here is how it looked in different stages of the process:

sugar and cream cooking

The finished hot caramel sauce

Have fun trying and let me partake in your experiences in the comment section! Thanks!