Seriously slow... melting banoffee muffins.

Hubris, thy name is banana bread.

Having spent several weeks deriding the Instabakers and Twittercooks their attempts to while away lockdown making an all-in-one loaf, I had a busy week at work and found myself in possession of this:

Awkward.

I suppose I could have made banana pancakes or frozen them in chunks for smoothies. However, having nailed my colours so firmly to the anti-banana-bread mast, I felt an ineluctable desire to create some overly-complicated, needlessly drawn-out version.

Making muffins instead of a loaf was an obvious starting point: smaller means fiddlier. I love banoffee pie (and pavlova, and trifle, and frappucinos) so incorporating caramel seemed like a guaranteed winner. It turns out there are two camps around banoffee: those who think the "offee" refers to coffee, and those who believe it refers to toffee. At the risk of stoking controversy, I am placing myself firmly in the former camp, for three reasons. First, it's not toffee, it's caramel. If banoffee pie is sticking to your teeth, something has gone wrong. Second, you need the bittnerness of coffee to balance the cloying sweetness of caramel, ripe bananas and whipped cream. And third... I only discovered this was a thing after I'd mixed in the coffee.

The idea of caramel made me think of those gooey puddings advertised with soft lighting and luscious-voiced women. I've never tried making anything like it, so now seemed the perfect time to start.

I have an unhappy relationship with caramel, and sugarwork in general. It seems to require far too exacting a standard of care. I can just about cope with jams and marmalades, and years of practice has helped create reliable Florentines. But I live in fear of caramel in its pure form, alongside toffee and fudge. Fortunately, I happened to have a tin of condensed milk in the cupboard, left over from making fudge - moderately unsuccessfully - at Christmas. The process of transforming the milk into dulce de leche would take several hours, and require minimal skill. Ideal.

Banana bread is a pretty forgiving concept - she says, sniffily - and I figured I would just add coffee to the main recipe and then layer in the caramel before baking.

Ingredients

397g - or one tin - of condensed milk.

Lots of salt.

215g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp of salt

100g of caster sugar

2 duck eggs (because this is a very middle-class apocalypse. Large hen eggs are fine, if you can get them.)

70 ml vegetable oil

5 over-ripe medium sized bananas (or just use the number you have).

1 tsp of instant coffee granules, dissolved in 1tsp of hot water.

Method

Bring a large saucepan of water the boil. Place an unopened tin of condensed milk below the surface, making sure it is completely covered by water. Apparently if you let it boil dry the whole thing will explode. I topped up the water every half hour or so and it was fine. Let it simmer for about three hours and then cool completely in the water. Once cooled, stir through salt to taste. I started with a tablespoon, stirred until it had dissolved, and tasted. I repeated this several times.

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Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and sugar together. Whisk the eggs vigorously, add the oil and coffee and beat together with the dry ingredients. Mash the bananas with a fork. I like a few lumps of banana in the finished cake so don't bother making them completely smooth. Stir the banana through the batter.

Grease some muffin tins (or line with muffin cases). Dollop a tablespoon of batter into each, making sure to cover the base evenly. Then add a teaspoon of salted caramel into the centre, and cover with another tablespoon of batter.

Bake the muffins at 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Reflections

I was reasonably pleased with the technical aspects of this: the caramel was nicely gooey and in most cases stayed put in the centre of the muffin. Baking the muffins first and then scooping out the centre to add the caramel could also work.

I was less convinced by the coffee - you could just about detect a background bitterness providing a foil to the caramel, but it was scarcely worthy of the name "offee". I would at least double the amount if making again.

I did consider adding either coffee or chocolate icing, but I thought this would turn them into cupcakes rather than muffins. The downside of not doing this was that - despite the undoubted calorific content - the muffins tasted distinctly... wholesome. Substituting the white caster sugar with soft brown or muscovado might add a depth to the sweetness.

Whether you need more sugar in your life right now is between you and your jeans.