Banana & Honey Cake

Banana & Honey Cake with cream cheese frosting

Banish the boring Banana bread and serve up this delicious twist on the family favourite instead. I’ve swapped out some of the sugar and added luxurious local honey instead.

Top it all off with a lovely light cream cheese frosting scattered with vibrant pistachios & edible flowers to make this a beautiful sweet temptation, perfect for a summer afternoon tea or picnic

Ingredients

• Cake

  • 160g Self Raising Flour

  • 85g Golden Caster Sugar

  • 65g Runny Honey

  • 55g Soft Butter

  • 1 Egg

  • 1 1/2 Ripe Bananas

  • 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

  • 1/2 tsp Bicarb

• Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 200g Cream Cheese (I use Philadelphia)

  • 100g Butter

  • 100g Icing Sugar

• For Decoration

  • Small handful of shelled pistachios - crushed

  • Handful of edible flowers

Method

1.             Preheat your oven to 190º fan and line a 9x9" baking tin with parchment paper

2.             Liquidise the egg, banana, sugar, honey butter and vanilla until smooth and light

3.             Sift the flour and bicarb into a medium sized bowl

4.             Pour the banana mix into the bowl and mix well keeping the mixture nice and airy.

5.             Pour into the lined baking tin and place on the middle shelf of the preheated oven

6.             Cook for 25 mins or until cooked through. To test - put a clean knife in the centre of the cake it should come out clean when it’s cooked

7.             Remove cake from the oven and allow to cool thoroughly before adding the frosting

For the Frosting - by Jane’s Patisserie

1.             Make sure your unsalted butter is at room temperature

2.             Beat your butter on it's own for a few minutes to loosen it.

3.         Add in the icing sugar, and beat again - I beat this for about 5 minutes, to make it really smooth.

4.         Make sure your cream cheese doesn't have any excess water - I find it best to add it to a bowl first just to make sure.

5.         Add in the cream cheese, and vanilla and beat. At first, it may look a little weird, but just keep on beating until smooth and thick.

Store the cream cheese frosting in the fridge if you are not using it straight away

To decorate, simply spread over the top of the cooled cake. (I did mine very roughly) and sprinkle over the crushed pistachios and edible flowers or whatever toppings you prefer

N.B. You can also make this mixture in a traditional loaf shape, but you’ll need to amend the cooking time to be more like 40 mins. (You’d also need less of the frosting mixture but I’ll leave that up to you!)