Winning prize – a £20,000 kitchen !!

No, I’m afraid it wasn’t me who won a £20,000 kitchen, it was Suzy Pelta who I met on twitter recently.

I discovered that she won Lorraine’s Cake competition on ITV’s Lorraine Show for her Chocolate and Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting recipe.  www.itv.com/food/programmes/lorraine/lorraines-cake-club/

Now, I absolutely love chocolate and banana and I’m also rather partial to peanut butter but I would never have considered putting banana and peanut butter together. I decided to give Suzy’s cake a try.

Ingredients

120g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate
3 medium bananas
160g light brown sugar
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs
150g self raising flour plus 1 extra tablespoon (for the bananas)

For the icing you need:

150g smooth peanut butter
225g cream cheese
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
300g icing sugar
A few drops of whole milk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180.

Butter and dust with flour, a 20cm deep round or heart shaped tin.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a pan

Mash the bananas and coat them with one tablespoon of flour.

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

When melted, add the chocolate and take off the heat.

When both melted, add the bananas and stir until incorporated.

Beat the eggs and add them with the sugar and salt. Mix.

Add the flour, a third at a time. Do not over mix, stop stirring as soon as the mixture comes together.

Put the mixture into your tin and put into the oven for 45 to 55 minutes. You may need to cover the top with tin foil after 25 minutes to stop it from over browning.

The cake is done when a piece of uncooked spaghetti or a sharp knife, inserted into the middle of the cake, comes out clean.

To make the frosting,  mix the peanut butter, cream cheese, vanilla and half of the icing sugar by hand.  (It is important to do this by hand because the cream cheese can split and go watery if over mixed).

Once mixed together, add the remaining icing sugar a third at a time, followed each time by a drop of whole milk.

Mix until the icing sticks to the spoon but could be easily spread. I possibly added a little  too much milk as the icing oozed slightly off the side of the cake.
Using a palette knife, spread the icing across your cake and decorate with crushed flake bars and glitter!

 The cake was deliciously sweet.   I absolutely loved the peanut butter frosting.  There was some left over so I put it in the freezer.  It even tasted great frozen, a bit like peanut butter ice cream.  Now there’s an idea for a future blog post…

If you would like to try more of Suzy’s recipes then visit her blog www. suzypeltabakes.com