Banana pudding/cake

I don't cook a lot of desserts, due to not really enjoying many of them that much! Don't get me wrong, I love baking, chocolate, icecream and fruity desserts, like my all time favourite apple crumble. I just don't really enjoy elaborate cheesecakes (give me a gut ache), or tasteless meringue, or can be bothered spending hours assembling something that tastes no better than brownies that I can mix together in about 10 minutes!

I am making a concerted effort to make a dessert for the family once a week. Last night was quite cool, so to go with our comfort-food meatloaf, I thought a warm dessert was a good idea. I do love sticky-date pudding but Mr fussy-pants, along with several other dislikes (including fresh fish, who doesn't like fresh fish!) doesn't like dried fruit. So I decided to make banana cake with caramel sauce.

This banana cake recipe has been around since I was a child as well. I think it may have originally come from an old Edmonds cookbook. I served it with caramel sauce and icecream for dessert, and then iced it to have for morning tea the next day.

Banana cake

125g butter, softened
3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla essence
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 t baking soda
1/4 c hot milk
1 t baking powder
1 1/2 c flour

1. Grease a 20cm or square tin. Pre-heat oven to 180 C.
2. Cream butter and sugar.
3. Beat in eggs, vanilla and banana.
4. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot milk.
5. Fold in the milk mix and dry ingredients.
6. Cook in the tin for about 30 mins, until a skewer comes out clean.
7. Ice with chocolate or lemon icing. (Or serve with caramel sauce for pudding!)