Going Bananas

I scored a huge bag of bananas for $2 while I was doing the grocery shopping yesterday. There was at least a couple of kilograms of lovely yellow bananas - I have no idea why they were going out cheap and, frankly, I don't care. Hubby and the kids go through bananas faster than I keep up but this was a heap of them, even by our standards, so I got busy searching out some recipes. Last night we settled for plain old banana splits - nothing fancy mind you, just banana split lengthways and some ice-cream, today I made our favourite banana bread and tonight I tried a new banana dessert.

This recipe was easy, fabulous and a huge hit. Even Offspring #2, who is fussy at the best of times and prefers her ice-cream unmarred by other sweet things, succumbed and declared it to be "very deee-lish-us". I doubled the recipe to make four one-cup puddings and realised, too late, that the servings were going to be far too big. Next time (yes, there will be a next time!) I'll make the recipe as is but put them into half-cup ramekins.

Banana Maple Puddings

from No Time To Cook by Donna Hay

2 tablespoon caster (superfine) sugar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2/3 cup mashed banana

50g butter, melted

1 egg

1/2 cup self raising flour

thick cream, to serve (we added ice-cream too)

extra maple syrup, to serve

Preheat oven to 170C. Place the sugar, maple syrup, banana, butter, egg and flour into a small bowl and mix until combined. Spoon mixture into 2 greased 1-cup (250ml) capacity ramekins and bake for 30-35 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Serve puddings warm with a dollop of thick cream and extra maple syrup.