Day 71: Banana Sticky Toffee Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce
inspired by The Lady Ottoline
With the knowledge that the rest of the week is looking cooler, less sunny and altogether less summery it means what I want to eat will change.
Rather than getting excited about barbecues, salads and lighter dishes I want something a bit more stodgy and a bit more decadent.
Also there’s the small matter of several brown bananas in my fruit bowl that I need to do something with.
I’m fussy with bananas. I like them green, barely ripe and still a bit crunchy. So when my Oddbox was delivered last Friday and I pulled out four, already too soft for my liking, bananas I knew I would have to cook with them.
Should I give in and finally make banana bread? I’m already making jam, baking sourdough and pickling vegetables. Why not complete the lockdown set of home cooking trends with the ever so instagrammable banana bread?
Plus I really like banana bread.
But I just can’t do it. I need to find something a bit different to do with it so my bananas don’t become just another covid cliché.
Thankfully help came in a recipe from The Lady Ottoline, a gorgeous gastro pub in Bloomsbury. On a cloudy day like today a cosy, wood panelled pub is exactly where I want to be.
And their Banana Sticky Toffee Pudding is exactly what I want to eat. Aidan’s favourite pudding is sticky toffee. One of mine in banoffee pie (I can’t pick just one favourite pudding!).
So this seems like the perfect marriage of the two dishes. More importantly it will use up my sad looking bananas.
The Lady Ottoline posted their recipe on Instagram. Here it is…
The only issue with this recipe is that it doesn’t tell you how many people it feeds. I decide to half the pudding recipe, as I only have two bananas left. The other two went into some overnight oats for breakfasts last weekend.
Making the cake batter is pretty simple. I have a 25cm square cake tin that I line with parchment paper and then tip the batter into. Even though this is half the quantity this still looks like a lot of cake.
Nevermind. Into the oven it goes. After turning the oven down I only bake it for 20 minutes and then take it out. It looks done to me and a skewer comes out clean when I poke it into the sponge. I remove it from the tin and then leave it to cool completely before putting in the fridge overnight.
This turns out to be one of those amazing cakes that just gets squishier and more moist over time. I love these kind of cakes.
The next day I portion up the cake. I get nine generous pieces, plus all the trimmings from around the edge (which turn out to be delicious with a cup of tea). So now my freezer is full of portions of cake ready for future puddings. I hope it freezer well. Only time will tell.
The remaining portions get dunked in my butterscotch sauce with is super easy to make. Just add the butter and sugar to a pan and heat until its melted and all the sugar has dissolved. Then stir in the cream. I halved the butterscotch sauce recipe too, and this turned out to be enough for two people.
Cake for ten and sauce for two. Oh well.
My sticky coated cake slices now go back into an oven to warm through for five minutes. Served with more butterscotch sauce and clotted cream ice cream.
It’s Kelly’s clotted cream ice cream from the supermarket. I thought about making my own. I do actually have an ice cream maker. But there’s no way I can fit the contraption in the freezer at the moment. So shop bought will have to do.
The ice cream is not so elegantly dolloped on the plate. There is a certain irony that I own and ice cream maker but not an icecream scoop. A dessert spoon does the job but it’s not as neat as it could be!
But neatness doesn’t matter once you have a bite. The pudding tastes delicious. Warm and rich and comforting. Everything a dessert should be.
And so much better than banana bread.
“It’s not as good as a normal sticky toffee pudding though” says Aidan
Oh well. Looks like I’ll be eating the other seven portions then.