Serves: Makes one loaf - Time:
It feels wrong at this time to waste anything so, on the basis of waste-not-want-not my blackened, over-the-hill bananas were transformed into this tasty loaf. I’m also trying to use what I have in the cupboards so a quick rummage produced miso paste (never not without) and a tin of Carnation Caramel, both of which seemed good cakefellows for bananas. Don’t be scared about the miso –there’s not so much that it dominates. If you want to go the whole hog you could swirl the remaining half tin of caramel with some cream cheese and slather over the top of the loaf/cake.
Ingredients
- 200g fine plain flour (I use 00 flour)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 150g unsalted butter softened at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
- 230g caster sugar
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 3 tablespoons white miso paste (I use Miso Tasty which is my favourite)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 small or 2 large overripe bananas, about 240g, mashed
- Half a 497g tin Carnation Caramel
Method
- Heat oven to fan 160˚c, mark 4. Grease a one litre, deep loaf tin (23 x 14 x 7cm) and preferably line it with a 22x 12x 6.5cm loaf cake case. If you haven’t got cake cases you can use non-stick baking parchment paper. Sift the flour with the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and set aside.
- Put the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat for at least five minutes until pale and fluffy. Slowly beat in the eggs, a tablespoon at a time, adding a little flour if it looks like the batter will curdle. Mix in the miso and vanilla extract. Carefully fold in half the flour, followed by half the bananas. Repeat.
- Spoon about a third of the batter into lined cake tin. Place 4-5 teaspoons of the caramel over the batter. Spoon over another third of the batter and repeat with the caramel. Top with the remaining batter and dot over 4-5 teaspoons of caramel. Take a skewer and swirl through the cake batter.
- Bake in the centre of the oven for 1 hour 5-10 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. You can cover the cake with foil after about 55 minutes if it looks too brown. Leave to cool in the tin for one hour then turn out and cool completely on a wire rack.
