Little Banana Cakes with Maple Pecan Icing

These little treats are just the thing to whip up when you're short of time, they're delicious and look impressive... in a cute sort of way, and yet they take no time at all! They were lovely and moist and banana-ry which was helped by very ripe bananas, and the maple icing and pecans finished the cakes off perfectly to give a very tasty treat... and one that I will certainly be making again.

As you can see in the picture the cakes came out of the oven quite rounded, however the recipe calls for them to be served upturned... as you can imagine this would give quite wobbly, odd looking cakes! Therefore I cut the top off each cake before turning it over to give a stable base... and as I don't like waste, I obviously had to eat the off cuts...I was performing a public service... honest! ;-)

In order to ensure your banana cakes come out of the muffin tin in one piece is to make sure the holes are well greased. A top tip is to use Wilton's Cake Release oil which they claim 'works everytime'.

Happy baking!


50g butter, softened
85g caster sugar
100g plain flour
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 large egg
1 ripe banana
11/2 tsp baking powder

Icing

100g icing sugar
2-3 tbsp maple syrup
A drop of vanilla extract
18 pecan halves (toasted if you wish)

Pre-heat your oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5 and grease a muffin pan (I made double the quantity and used a 12 hole pan). Add all the cake ingredients in to a bowl and beat with an electric whisk until you've got a smooth batter. Divide the mixture between the muffin pan holes and bake for around 15minutes, check with a cake tester. Once removed from the oven, leave for 5 mins in the pan before cooling on a wire rack. At this stage you can also freeze these cakes!

Once cool, to make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and then add in the maple syrup and vanilla and then mix to a smooth, thick icing which is suitable for drizzling over your cakes. Then finally, turn your cakes upside down (cutting the tops off if necessary) and drizzle the icing over the cakes, letting it run down the sides before topping each cake with 2-3 pecans.

* Adapted from BBC GoodFood 2012 Calendar

Weekly Bake-Off: Mississippi Mud Pie

Do you love baking and are you a fan of Mary Berry? Then perhaps you should check out the Weekly Bake-Off blog. I recently discovered the Weekly Bake-Off where the aim is to work through all one hundred recipes in Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes, one per week.

The recipe is set by the host every Monday and then should you take on the challenge a picture of your efforts should be tweeted by the end of the week before all resulting pictures are rounded up on the blog at the end of the week.

The recipe this week was Mississippi Mud Pie! I've never made it before so was a little apprehensive as to what it would be like but in fact it turned out quite well. I followed the recipe faithfully, it called for 39% cocoa plain chocolate which I couldn't seem to find but when I googled it... turns out this is Bourneville! However, were I to make this again I think I would go for something a lot more chocolatey as the taste test panel felt that although quite tasty, it didn't quite deliver that chocolate intensity that you might expect and that it was not quite chocolatey enough. They also described the texture as half way between a mouse (or a mousse even!) and a torte.

When cooking the sides puffed up massively above the height of the tin which was quite alarming when the middle stayed put...however, don't panic, when you take it out of the oven it cools in the tin and sinks back down to level again!

Overall, I enjoyed the bake and will definitely be joining in with the Weekly Bake-Off again. Why not give it a go as it's a great way to widen your repetoire and Mary Berry's recipe book is currently only £4 on Amazon... a bargain. Happy baking!

For the crust:

• 100g crushed digestive biscuits ( I blitzed mine in a mini food processor)
• 50g butter, melted
• 25g demerara sugar

For the filling:

• 200g plain chocolate (39% cocoa solids)
• 100g butter
• 1 tbsp instant coffee powder
• 1 tbsp boiling water
• 300ml single cream
• 175g dark muscovado sugar
• 6 large eggs, beaten

Grease a 20cm springform tin and heat the oven to 180c/Fan 160c/Gas 4. First make the base by mising together, the biscuits, the melted butter and the demerara. Press the biscuit mixture in to the base of the tin in a even layer.

For the filling, break the chocolate in to pieces and then gently heat it in a pan with the butter, coffee powder and boiling water until completed melted. Once ready remove from the heat and then beat in the cream, sugar and eggs. The prepared mixture is then poured in to the tin over the biscuit base. Bake in the oven for around 1 hour and 15 minutes or until set. Leave to cool in the tin, before removing and serving with whipped cream and a dusting of icing sugar.

* Adapted from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes (My Kitchen)