Banana Blanc Mange

Blanc Mange is basically Europe's answer to pudding and I love it. Not only that, but as I have proved in previous posts, I love banana, so this was an obvious recipe for me to do. I actually found this recipe from a recipe book that presumably came with a fridge-freezer many years ago, back when people didn't really know how to use such mod-cons. Most of the recipe book is filled with enough jellied meat recipes to make you feel sick, but this one was actually rather delicious. Note that once made, these should be eaten within two days. I apologise for the brown banana chunks in the photo of the finished blancmange, I forgot to take a picture of it until the following day!

Here is the original recipe I was working with:

Banana Blanc Mange (makes 4 desserts)

Bare Necessities:
3 Bananas
1oz/30g Corn Flour
1 Egg Yolk
1pint/2cups/500ml Milk
1oz/30g Sugar
1/2tsp Vanilla Essence

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and slowly bring to the boil.
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the cornflour, careful to remove any lumps.
3. Place back on the hob and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring continuously.
4. Take off the heat and let it cool for a couple minutes.
5. Chop the bananas into small chunks.
6. Stir an egg yolk into the milk mixture and then stir over a low heat for another 2 minutes.
7. Take off the heat and stir in the chopped bananas and the vanilla.
8. Pour into small pots or ramekins and leave to cool in the fridge.
9. Once chilled, serve and enjoy!

Banana Cake with a Cream Cheese Drizzle

I'm an unashamed banana fan. I love them on their own, sliced up with custard, blended into a milkshake, placed on a pancake, mashed into an ice cream - you name it, I love it! But as any banana fan will know, they have a notoriously small 'yummy' window between leaf green and mud brown. So much so, in fact, that across the internet, people are making various comics expressing their outrage at a banana's inability to stay at optimum yumminess for long enough.

However, not all is lost! Thankfully there is one recipe that is renowned for salvaging these now brown bananas - banana bread! Unfortunately I've often found banana bread to be quite stodgy and heavy, so I decided to instead make banana cake. I would attribute the recipe but a) I can't find where I found it, and b) I changed it a bit anyways, so I guess it doesn't really matter that much.

Also, funny story... actually not really that funny but oh well. Basically, when my cake came out of the oven, I was letting it sit in the tin for a bit, and I noticed that the hot air coming up from the cake was making the baking paper move, and it made it look a bit like it was breathing, so I took a video of it, pretty cool, huh?

On with bananas!!


Banana Cake with a Cream Cheese Drizzle

Bare Necessities

For the Cake:
140g Butter
140g Sugar
2 Eggs
140g Self-Raising Flour
1stp Baking Powder
2 Brown-ish Bananas

For the Icing:
55g Cream Cheese
30g Butter
175g Icing Sugar
1tsp Milk

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170C/Gas mark 4/340F.
2. Grease and line a loaf tin. I'd recommend letting the paper stick out of the pan a bit because it makes it easer to get the cake out afterwards.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and creamy.
4. Slowly beat in the eggs.
5. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas. They don't have to be completely pureed, but just a bit liquidy.
6. Fold in the flour, baking powder and bananas until fully combined.
7. Pour the mixture into the tin and pop in the oven for 45 minutes-1 hour, or until it's golden brown and cooked through.
8. Take the cake out of the oven and let it sit for 5-10 minutes in the tin, before moving it to a cooling rack to cool down.
9. Whilst the cake is cooling, beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and milk until they're fully combined and creamy.
10. Once the cake is mostly cooled down, but still slightly warm, move it to a plate, and drizzle the icing over the cake. You can choose to do only a little drizzle, but I chose to cover the cake with it.
11. Either leave the cake to cool down completely before serving, or take a sneaky slice before, and enjoy!!

Banana Cake And Cream Cheese Frosting

Oh my God. I cannot even begin to express how unbelievably good these are. MMMMMM. Actually, before you go and make it, I should warn you, it makes a LOT of batter, i had three very big layers, which meant I had one VERY big cake that came to school with me the next day. The cake lasted a while, actually, which is understanding, considering that is was a very big cake, but it was very good. I probably won't be making a cake in a while now because I ate so much of this one. Luckily, I did have my good friends in house to sit and devour it with me so that I didn't feel like tooo much of a fat pig. In all honesty though, if you don't have a big event to take this to or a large amount of people to share it with, I would advise you to half the mixture. Aside from that, I don't really have all that much to say, so whilst I go and work of some calories, or do some revision for my GCSEs, you guys get on with this recipe!


Banana Cake And Cream Cheese Frosting
Bare Necessities

For The Cake
3 medium to large Bananas
half a Lemon
3cups/300g Plain Flour
1 1/2tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda/Baking Soda
3/4cups/170g Butter
2 1/4cups/500g Sugar
3 Eggs
2tsp Vanilla Essence
1 1/2cups/375ml Milk


For The Frosting
1/2cup/112g Butter
1cup/225g Cream Cheese
1tsp Vanilla Essence
3 1/2cups/440g Icing Sugar


1. Preheat the oven to 275F/135C.
2. Grease and line three cake tins.
3. Cream together the 3/4cups butter and 2 1/4cups sugar together until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time with the 2tsp vanilla essence.
5. Mix in half the flour and the bicarbonate of soda, followed by half the milk, then the remaining flour and milk.
6. In a separate bowl, blend up the bananas and mix with the juice of half a lemon.
7. Mix in the mushed up bananas with the rest of the batter.
8. Pour the batter into the cake tins and pop in the oven for an hour or until cooked through.
9. Once the cakes have cooked, take them out of the oven and place on a cooling rack to cool.
10. Blend together the remaining butter, the cream cheese, the remaining vanilla essence and the icing sugar and then beat until light and fluffy. Feel free to add more of any ingredient if needed.
11. Take one of the cakes and place it on a plate.
12. Then split the icing into four and spread one quarter of the icing on the top of the cake.
13. Put the second cake on top of it and repeat.
14. Put the last cake on top and spread one of the remaining quarters over the entire cake.
15. Now put the last quarter and the cake into the fridge to chill.
16. Once the cake is chilled, take it out and spread the rest of the icing over the cake.
17. Slice up and enjoy!