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Prep time
6 hours 20 minutes
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Cook time
1 hour
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Serves
12
Author Notes
To confine your use of miso to just soup would be to miss out on a multitude of exciting gastronomic opportunities – one of the best of which would have to be the miso butterscotch that goes with Jikoni’s famous banana cake. This dessert has such a cult following that certain die-harders will call ahead to make sure we have a portion saved for them.
The banana cake is based on the idea of a sticky toffee pudding, although it is much less dense. Then there’s that dizzyingly luxurious miso butterscotch with its compelling mix of sweet and salty flavours. To top it all off, we have the ‘nostalgia in a bowl’ of Ovaltine kulfi, a condensed-milk ice cream that has an almost chewy texture. And if that wasn’t enough to make you fall in love with this dessert, making it is a piece of cake!
Extract taken from Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen by Ravinder Bhogal ($36, Bloomsbury). —Food52
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Ingredients
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1 tablespoon
black tea leaves
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200 milliliters
boiling water
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200 grams
pitted dates
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110 grams
unsalted butter
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350 grams
dark muscovado sugar
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1 tablespoon
treacle
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1 tablespoon
date syrup
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400 grams
self-raising flour
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4
eggs
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1 teaspoon
vanilla extract
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1 tablespoon
bicarbonate of soda
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200 grams
peeled bananas
- For the kulfi
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50 grams
Ovaltine
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450 grams
condensed milk
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300 milliliters
double cream
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For the butterscotch
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500 milliliters
double cream
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175 grams
demerara sugar
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175 grams
unsalted butter
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1 tablespoon
golden syrup
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60 grams
white miso
Directions
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The kulfi will take at least 6 hours to set, so make it ahead of time. In a large bowl, mix the Ovaltine into the condensed milk until there are no lumps. In a separate bowl, whip the cream to soft peaks, then fold it into the condensed milk mixture. Pour the kulfi into a tub and freeze until set. It really is as simple as that!
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Preheat the oven to 190°C/Fan 170°C/Gas Mark 5. Line a 24cm square cake tin with baking parchment.
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Put the tea leaves in a heatproof jug or bowl, pour over the boiling water and allow to infuse for a minute. Strain the tea, discarding the tea leaves, then soak the dates in the hot tea for 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth. Stir in the treacle and date syrup, followed by the flour, and mix well. Mix the eggs in one at a time.
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Tip the soaked dates and tea into a blender or food processor, along with the vanilla extract, and blitz to a puree. Add the bicarbonate of soda and pulse briefly, then add to the bowl and mix thoroughly.
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Wipe out the blender, add the bananas and blend until smooth, then add to the cake batter and stir in well. Pour into the tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
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Meanwhile, to make the butterscotch, put the cream in a saucepan over low heat. Add the sugar, butter and golden syrup and whisk until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted. Finally whisk in the miso, then remove from the heat.
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Turn the cake out on to a wire rack and leave to cool a little.
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To serve, cut into 12 portions, then serve warm with the hot miso butterscotch and the Ovaltine kulfi.
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