Sprinkle 1/4 cup of sugar over the bottom of a heavy based medium saucepan (I like to use my Le Creuset Dutch Oven for this) over medium heat. Once the sugar has almost completely melted sprinkle the rest of the sugar over and leave to melt until it turns a deep golden brown colour. You can stir the sugar as often as required while it is melting, but the less you can do the better as less lumps will form which take longer to melt. Using this “dry” method of melting sugar means that you can stir the sugar as often as you like, if you use the alternative method with added water then you cannot stir the sugar while it is melting.

While the sugar is melting place the cream in a small saucepan and heat over low heat until you see bubbles forming around the edge.

When the sugar is golden, remove from the heat, add the hot cream and stir vigorously to combine. Caution the sugar is very hot and the mixture will bubble up when you add the cream but it will subside relatively quickly and form a gooey, velvety caramel sauce.

Place back on the heat and add the bourbon and salt. Continue stirring for another 30 sec then remove from the heat and set aside to cool. You may want to transfer the caramel to another dish and place in the fridge to speed up the cooling process.

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease and line a 20cm/8in ring cake tin (see note). Make sure the sides of your parchment paper stick up 5cm/2in higher than the tin because the cake rises quite a bit and this will prevent it spilling over.

Place butter, caster sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy.

Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. If the mixture looks like it is curdling then add 1 Tbsp of flour and this should fix it.

Sift in flour, baking powder and cinnamon and mix to combine.

Add the sour cream, vanilla and bananas and stir until just combined. Don’t over mix.

Spoon into preprepared cake tin then place in the oven to bake for 35-45 min or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 min in the tin before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cake is cooling make the cream cheese icing.

Place cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until fluffy about 5 min.

Add the icing sugar then beat for another 10 min until pale and fluffy.

Drizzle in vanilla and beat until combined.

Cut cake in half.

Put mascarpone in a small bowl and beat until soft. Either pipe (see note) or spread the mascarpone over the bottom half of the cake.

Drizzle over approximately 1/4 cup of caramel.

Place the top half of the cake on to the bottom.

Spread over the cream cheese (I’m a bit messy with this because I like to make it look a bit rustic, but feel free to be neat or even to pipe on the icing).

Decorate with walnuts and banana chips.

Drizzle over more caramel (you may have some caramel left over depending on how much you like to use, but any leftover sauce is great served over vanilla ice cream).

Scatter with edible flowers.

The un-iced banana cake will keep for 2 days in an airtight container at room temperate. Once iced it is best eaten on the day.