Banana Caramel Cake

It's the weekend and it's time for cake.

I love making cakes. Baking fads will come and go (cronuts, anyone?), but cakes are forever. They're comforting, they're sweet, and they can look damn impressive if you pretty them up a bit. You know what you're getting with a cake. 

I'm slowly getting into the swing of cake decorating, and buttercream rosettes are my absolute favourite thing to do these days, quick and easy and pretty! I suppose I could have gone all out and iced the sides too, but there's something I find quite nice about leaving the golden brown edges of the cake exposed, so you can just get hints of the filling within. I suppose these days you'd call it a "naked" cake, so I think my laziness is on trend.

Makes a 3 layer cake

Ingredients for the Cake

• 115g butter
• 100g golden caster sugar
• 100g brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 250ml milk
• 3 bananas, mashed
• 150g caramel (1/2 cup)

Ingredients for the filling

• 55g butter
• 50g caramel, plus approx. 50g extra to spread between the layers
• 300g icing sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• Fudge pieces, to decorate (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Grease and line 3 cake tins.

Cream the butter and the sugars until light. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in between until smooth.

In a separate bowl, add the flour, baking powder, salt and mix. Set aside.

In another bowl, mash the bananas, add the milk and vanilla and mix well.

Alternate adding the banana mixture and the flour to the butter mixture in divided batches.

When all incorporated, add in the caramel and mix again until smooth.

Divide evenly between the three tins. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the oven, turn out and allow to cool on a rack. Wait until entirely cooled before 

decorating.

For the buttercream, mix the butter and caramel and salt.

Gradually add in the icing sugar until you get a smooth, pipe-able consistency.

To assemble the cake, spread caramel on 2 of the layers, followed by the buttercream.

Put one iced layer on the bottom, top with the next iced layer, and then top it off with the plain one.

Now, you can get to work!

I piped some caramel roses onto the top, and filled in the gaps with plain buttercream. I like the final look, but I only did it that way because I ran out of the caramel buttercream.

Scatter fudge chunks on top and chow down!