I am always looking for new ways to use bananas in my recipes and this one has to be one of the best I have baked so far.
I added some thyme infused honey into the cake with some brown sugar to give it extra flavour.
I love honey it is one of my favourite things to cook with I have loads of jars of different varieties, like blossom, lavender and acacia.
I added brown sugar into the frosting it gave it such a great flavour I highly recommend it.
I apologise for the long post but I took some photos from my day out visiting a apiary and thought I would share them.
some of the beautiful bees I saw in cockington,
did you know a bee will make 1/2 tsp of honey in its life time, a worker bee will live for 6 weeks in the summer or 6 months in the winter and a queen bee can live for 4 to 6 years and is fed exclusively on royal jelly. (sorry for getting all geeky on you)
lemon thyme from my garden I added some to a jar of honey two weeks ago and it has infused the flavour,
bees enjoying the flowers on blackberry bush
i visited a hive at cockington court, i grew up here as my dad had a work shop in the craft barn when i was younger.
i always feel that visiting cockington is like stepping back in time, all the houses are thatched and really old, there is so much land to walk the dog on its brilliant for a day out with the family.
after we visited the bee hives we stopped for lunch in the pub which is was wonderfully old.
how perfect that there was a cricket match being played on the green, so british.
recipe
2 bananas
150g unsalted butter
200g self raising flour
4 tbsp creme fraiche or double cream
200ml thyme infused honey
100g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsb vanilla extract
50g hazelnuts
preheat the oven to 180c 350f
toast hazelnuts for 5 minutes and chop up finely
Add the butter and sugar in to the bowl and cream together until pale then add the eggs one at a time, then add the creme fraiche or double cream and honey and vanilla and mix together. mash the bananas and mix into the wet ingredients
sift in the flour and fold in then add the hazelnuts.
spoon into 2 lined cake tins (9 inch),
bake for approx. 45 minutes
for the frosting
300ml double cream
5 tbsp butter
5 tbsp soft brown sugar
whip the butter and cream with the brown sugar until thick.
spoon onto one of the cakes and then add the second layer of sponge, then add some more frosting on to the top of the cake and use a pallet knife to spread it around the sides. I then scraped it back to look like a naked cake.
I drizzled some caramelised white chocolate over the top and decorated it with lemon thyme.
to make the caramelised white chocolate I place good quality white chocolate (over 20% cocoa) in a oven proof dish with some oil and placed it in the oven stirring every 10 minutes until it tuned a caramel colour then I made a ganache by adding cream I followed the instructions here
linking up at
This looks so delicious! What a marvelous place to see the bees, and I do hope you'll share more of Cockington with us. I did not know the production output of one bee being only 1/2 tsp. makes it all the more precious.
Wow an amazing post
Another gorgeous cake! I love the naked style of frosting. Banana + thyme sounds like a delicious combo 🙂
Aimee, you've done it again, ma'am!
I loved you shared pics of your trip, too. It's nice to see new places I'd love to one day visit. It probably won't happen but it is nice to live vicariously through others. Hugs.
Banana cakes are always delicious and I love the honey and thyme in this!
These photos are so gorgeous! I never would have thought to pair banana and thyme, but I'm so glad you did! I also enjoyed the bee facts 🙂
I love bananas and is always looking for new recipe to infuse banana into it. I would love to give this a try! And may I say, your photos are gorgeous!!
This looks amazing how much banana would you say this uses I have pretty small bananas should I add 3?
If they are very small then I would suggest using three