Banana Honey Cake

I found the precursor to this recipe on a blog somewhere, in looking it up again, I believe it originally came from a magazine from the BBC (BBC GoodFood Magazine's 101 Cakes and Bakes), and was called Devonshire Honey Cake. Now, I really like this cake, it's become my current favourite, and I wouldn't want to change it for any reason. You can google the recipe, it's easy to find.

So, I was thinking the other day, what would it taste like if you added bananas. I know, I said I wouldn't want to change the recipe for any reason, but that's how a foodie's mind works. I wanted to make a new recipe. I have some in my freezer, you see, and am looking for ways to utilize them. And, I thought, this would be a good way, because I like banana cake, and caramel-toffee cake, which is what this honey cake kind of tastes like, with bananas, could be quite good. Well, it turned out well, a nice banana flavour throughout the toffee cake, though I would say that it needed a little more time for the centre to cook through, so watch that, perhaps up the time to closer to 55 minutes. Too, it seemed to puff up higher than the Honey cake. If you don't have or can't get muscovado sugar, you can substitute demerera sugar, I have done that, or perhaps even brown sugar, but the muscovado has a better flavour. When you boil the honey, butter and sugar for a minute, you are caramelizing the sugars, giving it a nice toffee flavour. The smell coming off this when it comes out of the oven is divine! A great afternoon coffee cake, or even for breakfast, like I had it this morning!

Banana Honey Cake
225 g sweet butter
250 g runny honey
100 g dark muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
300 g (2-1/4 cups) self-rising flour
2 large very ripe bananas (3/4 cup)
2 Tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 300F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.

Melt butter, honey, and sugar slowly in a saucepan. Boil for one minute. Leave to cool (caramel will thicken).

Beat in eggs one at a time in the saucepan. Whisk in flour into egg caramel mixture in two batches. Mash ripe bananas; mix well into the flour mixture with a whisk.

Pour into the greased pan and bake for 50-55 minutes.

Turn out the cake onto a wire rack. Warm 2 Tbsp honey in a small saucepan and brush over the top of the cake to glaze. Leave to cool.