Sticky Toffee Banana Puddings

Hello There!

It seems the first true days of summer have finally arrived -well at least they have here in Ireland anyway.The past few days have seen the temperatures hitting the low twenties, which for a country renowned for its dreary,dull climate,comes as a very pleasant surprise.The only downside to this is the unfortunate reality that I (and many other people) still have a week of exams to do.There really is truth behind that whole "exam weather" statement that people throw around every year without fail.

Anyway,last weekend in an effort to keep me from going completely mad from being cooped up all day staring at the inside of textbooks (or outside the window),I decided to bake something from the newest addition to my recipe book collection Donal Skehan's Kitchen Hero:Great Food for Less.Short of living under a rock for the past year or two you can't have helped but have heard of Donal with his numerous books,newspaper/magazine articles and of course his television show.I always find hi recipes reliable,simple and tasty so when I heard his new book had been released, it was a bit of a no brainer as to whether I would buy it or not.

The element of Donal's books and articles that I love the most has got to be his photography.With every recipe there is always an accompanying photo which is sure to make your mouth water and I have heard that he does a lot of his food styling and photography himself.

After flicking briefly through the book I found myself,as usual, in the dessert section where I happened upon the recipe for Sticky Toffee Banana Puddings.Sticky Toffee Pudding is without doubt one of my favourite desserts and along with the aforementioned beautiful picture,I really needed to convincing to attempt this recipe.The method was really quite simple and making the caramel sauce,which as anyone knows can often result in a hard mass of sugar stuck to your pan,was a breeze!The recipe also makes ten portions,so can easily feed a large crowd - or serve as dessert for a family of five for two days ;).The end result was,as I'm sure you have guessed,delicious.In the past I have found sticky toffee puddings can turn out disappointingly dry but these were right on the money.Moist and sticky indeed.Floating in a puddle of caramel sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream,these were the perfect weekend treat.