Cake Batter

1. First thing to do is get on with the cake batter. Preheat the oven to 175 ° (340 °F approx). Then line two 7 inch round cake tins with greaseproof paper. This part usually takes 10 minutes to mix and 25 minutes to bake.
2. Assemble all the ingredients together.
   I make my vegan egg replacer by adding yogurt to olive oil (as set out above) and mixing in ¼ tsp xanthum gum. The texture is quite gloopy. Leave to one side for a couple of minutes.
   Next add the vinegar to the milk and set that aside to curdle.
   In a large mixing bowl, sift in the flour, add in your sugar, baking powder and baking soda. spices and salt. Give the dry ingredients a good whisk about to ensure all the leveners are fully incurporated into the mix.
3. Add the vanilla essence into your plantmilk. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the milk, 'egg' replacer, mashed banana's and 45 ml of vegetable oil. Give it a good mix together to ensure you have a nice loose cake batter.

Banana Topping

1. Melt butter and stir in the sugar. Chop your two bananas.
   In one of the lined tins spread out the butter and sugar mix. Next arrange the chopped up bananas.

Baking.

1. Please note I use a fan assisted oven, so depending on the type of oven you have at home, cooking times my vary slightly.
   Divide the cake batter evenly between the two tins. Pouring one half on top of the banana and sugar mix.
   Pop both of the tins into the oven at the same time and bake for 30 mins approx. At the 20 minute stage of baking, I gave my tins a quick turn to ensure they were evenly cooked on all side then pop back into the oven.
   When the cake is done, it should be nice and spongy to the touch. You can also do the toothpick test to ensure cakes have cooked right through.
   Put them on a wire rack and allow to cool fully before assembling the cake. While it is resting you can get on with other elements of the cake.

Rum & Coffee Butter Cream

1. While the cakes are baking, get on with buttercream. It's easy enough to make.
2. I generally start by hand, using a wooden spoon. So I add the butter to a mixing bowl and beat it lightly with the spoon to soften if. Then using a sieve, I gradually add in the icing sugar.
   In between sifting the sugar add in the tablespoon of coffee. Sift in a bit more sugar, give it a beat.
   Then add in a tbsp rum. Sift in more sugar, give it a beat. Repeat until you have used up all the liquid and all the sugar.
   You should now have a nice fluffy buttercream.
   Please note that if the buttercream is too loose add more sugar. If it is too stiff add an extra tablespoon of plant milk.
   You can speed things up a bit by using a hand mixer if you wish, but apply the same steps as above. This process should take 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Once the butter cream is ready, divide it between two piping bags and leave it in the fridge until it is time to assemble the cakes.

Banana Peel Brittle

1. Using the skin from one of the banana's. Cut it into very thin strips lenghtways. Once this is done, fry them in about a tbsp of butter for a few minutes. Then remove from the pan, pat off as much butter as possible and chop up the strands.
   Arrange them on a piece of grease proof paper to dry out a bit then get on with the brittle.
   You will need a heavy based saucepan for this recipe.
2. The trick to this recipe is time and patience. Also, don't have the heat on high. For example if your hob top goes from 1 being the lowest to 9 being the highest, heat it up on 4 which is just short of medium heat. The reason for this you don't want to burn the sugar. This part takes about 35 minutes max (hence the much needed patience).
   Heat up the saucepan first, then add about a 1/3 of a cup of the caster sugar to the pot. Once the sugar starts to melt and turn golden, add in another 1/3 cup of sugar. Keep swirling around the sugar to ensure heat is distributed evenly. Stir with a metal spatula or spoon.
   Continue this process until you have used up all the sugar and there are no lumps left in your liquid.
3. This next part you need to do quickly, add in the butter and nutmeg then stir vigorously until it has all been incorporated into the golden sugar mix. This step takes less than a minute. Once the butter is fully incorporated, quickly and carefull pour the hot mixture over the scattered banana skin on your baking sheet.
   Leave it to fully cool before you crack your brittle.

Assembly

1. Both your cakes should be fully cooled at this point. And if you havent already, invert the upside down banana cake so the bananas are visible.
   Pipe a thin layer of the buttercream on top of the banana upsidedown sponge, and spread carefully with a palette knife or spatula.
   Slice up the extra banana's and squeeze a bit of lemon juice over them to stop them from browning.
   Arrange a layer of banana's on top of the butter cream. Then carefully place the other cake on top to create a sandwich.
   Next, pipe a thin layer of butter cream on top of the cake. Some of my banana's started falling from inside the sandwich, so I piped simple buttercream flower to hold them in place.
   Next I randomly piped buttercream flowers on top of the cake. The assembly was pretty organic in that I piped some flowers, then added some bananas. I placed banana's inside some buttercream.
   I broke some of the brittle and arranged piece of banana brittle, in between buttercream and fresh bananas.
   I continued piping and adding bananas until I had none left. Placed a few more pieces of britltle on and then to just make it look pretty added some contrasting violas to the cake.
   This cake takes a little time and a lot of love and is packed with a heaps of bananery flavours.