When it comes to baking sweet treats, I usually make cakes. They’re fairly straightforward and usually there’s not a lot that can go wrong. The downside is that cakes look rather plain. Sure, you can stick decorations on them afterwards. But I rather have a cake that looks pretty by itself.
One simple way of making an interesting looking cake, is by making it an upside down cake.
An upside down cake has chopped fruits at the bottom of the baking tin, with cake batter poured over it. After baking the cake is turned over and served upside-down. This way, the layer of fruit becomes the decorative top of the cake.
Upside down cakes can be made with all kinds of fruit. This particular cake however, is a banana cake. At the moment it seems to be more fashionable to call it a banana bread instead of a cake. Possibly because “bread” gives the impression of it being healthy. Even though there is very little difference as far as ingredients go, I definitely wouldn’t call this a bread though. There’s far too much sugar and butter in it for that. It’s a great cake however.
Many recipes state that banana cakes are a great way to use up overripe bananas. This is definitely true but there is more to it than that. The bananas used actually must be past their best. When you feel like making a banana cake, you may not always have overripe bananas at hand. When this happens, it’s tempting to use some that are nice and yellow, instead of spotted or brown.
The results are invariably disappointing though. Banana cakes not made with overripe bananas always end up being denser and with a lot less banana flavor. I don’t know why this is the case, though I’m sure there’s some scientific explanation. So if you want to make this cake, be patient and wait until you have a couple of spotty bananas. Or even better, wait until they’ve gone almost completely black. The results are worth it.
Prep Time | 30 minutes |
Cook Time | 1 hour |
Servings |
servings
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- 300 g flour
- 40 g cornstarch
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 150 ml sunflower oil
- 100 g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 200 g crème fraîche
- 3 or 4 (over)ripe bananas about 300 g
- 100 g caster sugar
- 100 g butter
- 2 to 3 bananas
Ingredients
Cake batter
Caramel layer
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- Line a spring mould with baking parchment.
- Make the caramel by putting the sugar into a pan on a low heat. Once the sugar has melted, add the butter. Whisk everything together until the butter has melted as well. Pour the mixture into your prepared baking tin.
- Cut a banana into 1 cm (0.4 inches) slices and arrange them on the caramel. How many bananas you'll need exactly, will depend on the size of your tin and the size of the bananas.
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
- In a mixer-bowl add sugar, sunflower oil and eggs. Mix until combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine your flour, cornstarch and baking powder. Add this, a bit at a time, to your egg mix.
- Mash the bananas with a fork before adding them to the batter.
- Finally add the crème fraîche to the batter. Only mix until combined, avoid over-mixing.
- Pour the batter into the baking tin and put in the oven for about an hour.
- After taking your cake out of the oven, place onto a wire rack for 10 minutes. Then remove the ring from the springmould.
- Put a plate upside-down on the cake and then turn the cake over. Carefully remove the baking parchment from the top.
- The cake can be eaten both warm or cold.
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