And yes, today, I made the classic soft and fluffy banana cake again. However, this time I gave the recipe a little twist, and added a layer of chocolate to it. It turned out great and I was quite satisfied with what came out of the oven. The only part that I was not satisfied was that the bottom of the cake was a bit too moist. You can see it from my picture below. Nevertheless, it was a very good cake, and it had a very nice natural cut on the top, which I believe was due to the good balance of mixing I have done.
To enable myself to make banana cake whenever I wanted to, I always store up very ripe bananas at home. Nobody at homes eat them because they look a bit too ugly with all "freckles" on the skin. But they are in fact the key to a good banana cake. So remember, next time if you see ripe bananas that are abandoned, do save it up, smudge it and store it in the freezer. It can last for a few months! If you decide to use it, simply defrost it and then you can mix it with the other ingredients :)
Here's the recipe which I have adopted from Shirley and twisted it a little - making it more healthy, and more delicious - you will find that, banana and chocolate are - very great friends, probably, the best of the best friends :)
Utensils:
Spatula
rectanguar baking tin
parchment paper
a bowl for mixing
electric mixer
sieve
Ingredients:
100g butter ( I used margarine and it turned out great)
90g sugar (I used brown sugar to give it the darker colour and also reduced to 70g only)
120g cake flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp vanilla essence (optional)
200g banana smudge
10g cocoa powder (I used valrhona and it makes a difference)
2 eggs
nuts (optional)
Procedures:
1. Leave the eggs to room temperature and soften the butter (it takes around 2 hours) and preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. Smudge the bananas if you use fresh ones. Otherwise, defrost frosted banana smudge.
3. Sieve cake flour, baking power and baking soda and set aside.
4. Use the electric mixer to mix the butter and sugar until it appear creamy white. It will take around 5 minutes on medium speed.
5. Add in the eggs one by one, and mix thoroughly before you add in the second egg. Add also the vanilla essence
6. Add in the sieved flour mixture. Gently fold in to combine the ingredients.
7. Add in the banana smudge and gently mix until combine. Do not over-mix. You may add nuts at this stage if you wish.
8. Take out 1/3 of the batter and mix with the sieved cocoa powder.
9. line the parchment paper in the rectangular tin. Pour half of the banana batter into the tin.
10. Pour in the chocolate batter and spread evenly.
11. Lastly, pour the remaining banana batter and spread evenly. You may use a knife to gently carve into the batter to give the cake a "swirl".
12. Bake for around 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool and ready to serve.
Tip 1: to prevent air bubbles to form in the batter, gently tap the tin against the kitchen table a few times before you put the tin into the oven.
Tip 2: to give it a nice crack in the middle, you may use a knife to carve on the middle from left to right when the top of the cake appears solid while baking.
PS. This cake is. really. good.
