sweet dreams are made of frosting

In both the kitchen and in life, there are things that belong together. Often better paired than separately alone. To name but a few:

Bacon and avocado.

Pigeons and poison.

Tears and Bright Eyes.

Gin and tonic.

Beetroot and feta.

Toast and tea.

Felicity and Ben.

Banana and chocolate.

Banana and bread.

Banana and caramel.

Caramel and anything!

Baby banana loaves with caramel cream cheese frosting

(the baby loaves adapted from Nigella's banana bread, and the frosting is from Lucy at the Kitchen Maid)

175g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
125g butter, melted
150g sugar
2 large eggs
2 very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin) mashed - I used mine from the freezer
1 tsp vanilla
100g dark chocolate, cut into chunks

Preheat the oven to 180*C. Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and combine well.

In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Add the chocolate and the vanilla. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each addition, using a wooden spoon.
Grease your mini loaf pans and pour in the batter so they are just over half full. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 30 minutes, but keep an eye on them! They're ready when they're risen and golden. Leave in the tin to cool for a bit before turning onto a wire rack. Ice when cool.

The frosting recipe is available by clicking here.

I'm warning you - this stuff is probably one of the most incredible things I have ever made. I love caramel, and I love cream cheese icing, and I pretty much can never make this again because chances are I'll eat it all, with or without a baked good underneath. Then I'll just fill with guilt about all the calories, which will inevitably lead to multiple gym classes, which will lead to being filled with scorn when faced with couples who work out together in the front row of the gym class who then leave the class holding hands. And then I'll just get wrinkles from scowling, and then I'll have a whinge about being at the age where I can get both wrinkles and zits, and when inspecting said-zits I'll find my skin's gone dry, including a scaly chin, and I'll have to cry again because it's not even from pash rash!

So there.

Oh, and I chopped and dry toasted some walnuts and sprinkled them on top too. They're quite sweet, but the bitter chocolate cuts through the sweetness just nicely. These things are the goods. Give them a go!