Banana, caramel and lime pudding- Mexican dessert

That’s usually how it goes when we’re eating Mexican for dinner.
 
Here’s one reason; The Hungry One makes margaritas that are dangerously good. They need to be licensed.

So when we’re having a Mexican feast, there normally isn’t a dessert. By that point of the evening I’m usually a bit merry to bother with finding the side plates and sporks.

(Nb, there’s another reason we don’t often have dessert with Mexican. I soon discovered that there’s enough sugar syrup in a margarita to gild my thighs through a long dark winter. This was something I learned the hard way after taking a harsh look at myself in bathers in the wake of two weeks travelling through Baja and Southern California. A solid daily diet of margaritas the size of a fireman’s helmet,  chicken quesadillas, guacamole and corn chips is no friend to my lily white legs).

So often, a Mexican meal at ours would end with a big pile of pulled pork. That is, until this pudding came out to play.

Don’t be fooled. This is not an airy light cake that you can turn to for some sweet and dainty relief (in fact, it would serve well as a ship’s ballast).  Yet, despite it’s heft, the flavours are positively buoyant.

There’s some lip sticking tropical glue from bananas and caramel, which get an additional  twinkle care of a large sprinkling of lime zest and salt.

On the side you could do far  worse than a scoop of plain vanilla ice cream and a collection of  spiced nuts and seeds for crunch. These seeds are something I normally pull out at the start of a feast. They’re a riot of almonds and pepitas that get aggressively dressed with cinnamon, coriander and chilli.

Here they make a nice addition to the end of a meal. And they also go quite well with a margarita or two.

Luckily the cake is sturdy enough to counter act the effects of the earlier alcoholic indulgences.

The only problem is then it’s easy to start thinking it’s time The Hungry One went back onto the balcony to churn out another batch of margaritas.

One tequila, two tequila three tequila….

More.

Banana lime and caramel pudding with spiced nuts and seeds

Serves 6-8

Equipment
1 circular 20 cm cake tin, the bottom lined with baking paper. 1 hand mixer. 1 spatula. 1 citrus zester. 1 saucepan.

Shopping/ foraging
250 grams/ 0.55 lbs of butter
1 cup of caster sugar
4 eggs
1 cup of overripe smushed bananas
1 banana, split into segments to decorate the bottom
1 cup of self raising flour
Zest of two limes
Vanilla ice cream
1 cup of spiced Mexican nuts and seeds (recipe here)

Salted caramel sauce
 ¾ cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup pouring/ whipping cream
Salt to taste.

Here’s how we roll
1. Preheat an oven to 180 degrees C/ 350 F and grease a springform pan. Line the bottom with baking paper.
2. Decorate the bottom of the baking tin with long slivers of banana to make a pretty flower pattern.

3. Cream the 250 grams/0.55 lbs of butter with the cup of caster sugar using a hand mixer until it’s duckling yellow and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs, one by one. Beat in each egg before you add the next.

4. Fold in 1 cup of smushed over ripe bananas.

5. Fold in 1 cup of sifted self raising flour.

6. Bake for one hour.

To make the caramel sauce

1. Add the butter and the sugar together in a sauce pan and gently melt the butter.
2. Stir so the sugar dissolves.
3. Add the cream and allow to bubble away for a couple of minutes until thickened.

The pudding is best served warm, with warm caramel sauce, cold ice cream, a sprinkling of lime zest and a handful of spiced nuts for crunch.