Banana cake with salted caramel mascarpone frosting

Caramel, bonbons et chocolat
Par moments, je ne te comprends pas...

I've been humming this old tune since watching the last GBBO episode. Caramel was the theme of week 4. I rarely cook caramel, or cook with caramel, but I do have a good recipe for Millionaire's shortbread with Terry's Chocolate Orange.
I like salted caramel flavours, but my homemade caramel is inferior to bought varieties, so typically I just buy a jar of Bonne Maman Salted Caramel or Waitrose own caramel sauce.

There was a huge hullabaloo when GBBO moved to Channel 4 and got rid of several presenters and one of its judges. I can't say I was aggrieved or even flustered a little bit, as I've never been a big fan of Mel and Sue with their puerile jokes and - though I appreciate that might sound like a sacrilege - I find Mary Berry quite boring too (sorry, Mary).
The current contestants seem to be a diverse bunch. Some friends asked me if I'm cheering Julia on, since she is from Russia.
I appreciate Julia's baking skills, but find her grimaces absolutely embarrassing to watch.
Now that the token Nana (Flo) left, I'm undecided who to root for.

Back to the caramel bakes: I fancied a caramel-flavoured cake, but would not dream of doing any of the spun sugar or fancy caramel decorations. I prefer easy bakes without any froufrou.

Banana cake with salted caramel mascarpone frosting
Ingredients:
2 big-ish bananas (442g weight, peeled - 272g)
150g sugar (mix of brown, molasses and caster)
2 medium eggs
80g Flora (or butter)
200g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp cinnamon, ground
1/2tsp cloves, ground
1tbsp salted caramel, heaped
2tbsp ground almonds, heaped
for the frosting:
100g softened butter
100g icing sugar
100g mascarpone
2tbsp salted caramel + 1tbsp for drizzle
a handful of choco caramel curls (optional)

In a big mixing bowl mash peeled bananas with a fork, add sugar and mix well. Beat in two eggs, and Flora, add the flour, baking powder, spices, salted caramel and ground almonds. Mix together well until you reach smooth thick consistency.
Cut out a circle to fit inside a spring cake tin, and oil the sides and the circle. Pour the cake batter inside the tin. Put the tin in the oven preheated to 180C. Bake for about an hour. Check if it's ready with a wooden toothpick.
Take the tin out of the oven. Once cooled, slice the cake into two layers.
Prepare the frosting by beating together the softened butter with icing sugar and mascarpone, stir in the salted caramel.
Use one third of the frosting to spread over the first layer. Sandwich the second half on top.

Cover with more frosting.
In a small bowl mix together 1tbsp of salted caramel with a little bit of warm water to reach a runny consistency. Drizzle this caramel over the frosting and decorate with choco caramel curls (found in Lakeland).

This cake will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.

In this recipe I used a mix of three sugars, as I wanted to finish the ends of packets of brown sugar and molasses sugar, but by all means just use a demerara or brown sugar. Mascarpone could be swapped for cream cheese.

Adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky run by Cheryl at Madhouse Family Reviews, as I emptied the remains of a couple of bags of sugar, as well as used over-ripe bananas.