Upside-down banana cake

Serious yummy cake alert!

This was a 'spur of the moment' cake baking, as I had four over-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl that needed to be used.

We had a play in the park planned with school friends so I thought a cake might be something nice to take along to share.

Banana cakes are not as common here in Austria as they are in Australia, but I made one anyway.

This cake has a slight twist, in that the banana isn't actually in the cake, but is on top. But the flavour permeates all the way through in this recipe, and in my opinion, any cake with banana in it is a winner.

I will freely admit that I am not a cake baker. I am not a precise cook; I prefer to add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And cakes don't take too kindly to adding a bit of this and that. Generally cakes may refuse to rise or be rather dry and inedible, which I don't take too kindly too!

The other thing about baking cakes is that when you make a cake, it has to be eaten. I don't like to give the little people too many cakes and sweet things, even if it is homemade, and the man of the house doesn't eat much cake, so that leaves me, and my waist-line doesn't take too kindly to that. Maybe I need a few more kids in the house, then problem solved.

Back to the banana cake though. I found a recipe for upside down banana muffins, but I didn't want to make muffins, so I adjusted the recipe to make this cake. It was very much enjoyed at the park, and enjoyed at home and in the kindy lunchbox. I cooked this cake one afternoon, and ate it the next day, and it is still lovely and moist two days later.

You could serve this warm as a dessert-type cake with icecream or cream, or as a 'normal' cake cut into slices. This would also work well baked in a loaf tin, although you would half the quantity of the mixture.

In a first for me, I used vanilla seeds straight from the pod. I'm not sure this added anything special to the taste of the cake, but it was what I had - no vanilla essence to be found in the local supermarkets. The smell of the pods was wonderful and very different to usual bottle of vanilla I have in the cupboard.

What you'll need

* Serves 20 - 24 medium pieces of cake.

4 small ripe bananas - thinly sliced
170g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup cater sugar
2 eggs
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence (or seeds scraped from half a vanilla pod)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Melt half the butter and the brown sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Once combined and melted, remove from the heat. Line a 30cm x 20cm cake tin (approx size) with baking paper. Pour the sugar and butter mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, then layer the sliced banana on top. Set aside.

Make the cake batter.

Cream the remainder of the butter and caster sugar together with an electric mixer until pale and thick. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after adding each.

Sift in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder. Then stir in the milk and vanilla. Mix until just combined.

Spoon very carefully over the banana and smooth out the top.

Bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes away clean.

You can leave this to cool for 10 minutes then turn out and serve immediately while still warm. It would be lovely with vanilla icecream or cream.

Alternatively, turn it out onto a platter after 10 minutes let cool for half and hour, then store in an air-proof container until the next day.

* I was not very careful when I poured the batter into the cake tin over the bananas; dumping it all into the middle of the pan. As a result, all the banana shifted to the outside of the cake. This made the outside bits of cake deliciously gooey, but I thought the inside bits needed something extra, so I whipped up some lime and coconut icing for these bits of cake.