Banana Puddings with Ginger Butterscotch Sauce

At the moment, my blog is my happy place. Work is not. Work is the thing that sucks the life and joy out of me, but it's okay because I can come home and bake and blog. So it becomes incredibly frustrating when I am in a total baking funk. Lately I've been lacking ideas and inspiration. I've attempted a few baking experiments which have ended in disaster. It kind of makes me want to tear my hair out. So when a banana pudding was requested for dessert, I was more than happy to do it because it was something simple and safe. There was only so much that could go wrong, right? And nothing beats a warm, sticky pudding in the middle of winter.

I was too lazy to go to the supermarket. There are some days when I would love to bake, but I just cannot be bothered to leave the house. Even though I would have loved to try Linda's beautifully light looking steamed banana pudding, I didn't have all the ingredients I needed. So I just sort of made one up to match the ingredients I had at home (hence the weird mixture of cup and weight measurements, sorry!). I thanked my lucky stars that I had a container of mashed bananas in my freezer (I do this everytime I have some super black bananas that are about to get thrown out). So I went about with the usual beating and stirring, I was a little nervous because the batter was looking a bit like scrambled eggs. Uncomfortable feelings of doom were starting to build in the back of my mind, but to my surprise they baked really nicely, turning golden brown and fragrant, slightly softer and denser than a banana cake. They were reeeeallly buttery, so I've adjusted the amount of butter in the recipe below.

The real winner in this dessert is the ginger butterscotch sauce. It's thick and smooth, with just the lightest tinge of ginger. It might not be the very first flavour that you might imagine matching well with banana, but it really does the trick. I could imagine this sauce tasting just and lovely with a sticky date or chocolate pudding. The sauce it quite rich and sweet, so it was perfect with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It's the type of dessert that you just want to snuggle up on the couch with. Too bad it wasn't enough to pull me out of my baking bad place, let's just say I've wasted a lot of eggs, butter, sugar and lemons this weekend. My house smells like lemons and failure :( Apologies in advance if it's bit quiet around here for the next few weeks while I try to get my baking mojo back!

Banana Pudding Cakes with Ginger Butterscotch Sauce
(makes 12 servings)
For the banana pudding:
1 cup mashed over-ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
3/4 cup caster sugar
160g unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs
3/4 cup self-raising flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon

For the Ginger Butterscotch Sauce:
3 tbsp golden syrup (preferably Lyle's brand)
1/2 cup pouring cream
1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar
30g unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and grease a 12-hole cupcake or muffin tin well. Sift flour, baking powder and cinnamon in a separate bowl and set aside. Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well to combine after each addition. Beat in bananas, then gently fold in sifted dry ingredients.

Spoon mixture evenly into the greased cupcake tin, so they are about 3/4 full. Bake until golden brown on top and a skewer inserted into the centre of the puddings comes out clean, around 20-25 minutes depending on how big they are. Leave to cool in their tray for about 15 minutes, then using a flat bladed knife, carefully remove puddings from the tray.

To make the butterscotch sauce, place golden syrup, cream, sugar, butter, salt and ginger in a small saucepan and gently bring to the boil. Reduce heat slightly and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly until sauce is thick and smooth. Remove from heat and serve puddings with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a generous serve of sauce on top.