Cakes & Cupcakes
Banana Cake with Ganache
This is my banana bread recipe reinvented – it has a much lighter and more moist flavour, with a dark water ganache to offset the sweetness.
The onslaught of banana bread recipes continues, and I had overripe bananas. But I was determined to not bake another banana bread! I actually do not have many banana recipes, so wanted to use my banana bread recipe as a base and adapt it to make a cake.
If you have not tried my banana bread recipe already, it has a wonderfully moist, dense texture. I like the fact that it feels more bread-like, rather than a light and soft texture.
For this cake, however, I swapped out the butter for oil, valuing the lighter, softer texture in lieu of a more buttery taste. I also wanted a softer, fluffier crumb, so decided to use buttermilk instead of the sour cream in my banana bread recipe.
I wanted to take it a step further, and use up some leftover chocolate, so decided to make a dark chocolate ganache. I make most of my recipes in the evening, and at around 10pm realised I had no cream for the ganache! After a bit of googling, I found a great water ganache recipe. The main point to note about the ganache is that it has to be made with a chocolate containing at least 70% cocoa solids, or it won't set.
This cake is super easy to make, and requires fairly basic ingredients (you can create your own buttermilk at home by combining normal milk with a teaspoon of vinegar, letting it sit for 30 minutes before using it).
The recipe
Banana Cake with Ganache
adventureswithsugar.com/banana-cake-with-water-ganache/
Method
Method: banana cake
- Preheat the oven and prepare the tin: Preheat the oven to 180˚ Celsius. Grease and line the base and sides of a 20cm round tin with baking paper.
- Beat the eggs and sugar: Add the eggs, sugar and vanilla into a bowl and beat for around two minutes until nice and frothy.
- Add the oil: Slowly pour in the oil with the mixer running until it incorporates into the sugar.
- Add the buttermilk: Then add in the buttermilk.
- Sift the dry ingredients: Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cinnamon and mixed spice together.
- Add the dry ingredients: Add the sifted dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, in two parts.
- Add the bananas and extras: Add in the mashed bananas followed by the nuts/chocolate chips, if using.
- Bake: Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Oven temperatures vary, so start checking for doneness around 35 minutes.
Method: water ganache
- Make the caramel: Put the sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and place on medium-low heat. Stir to combine and once the sugar has melted, increase the heat to medium and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes until the colour is that of pale amber (do not make it too dark or the ganache will have a bitter aftertaste).
- Add the water and vanilla: Remove from the heat and pour in the water and vanilla essence. The mixture will seize, but return to the heat and continue to stir. This will bring it to a boil and the sugar will melt again.
- Let it stand: Remove it from the heat and wait for a minute.
- Prepare the chocolate: In that time, add the chocolate, broken into pieces, into another bowl.
- Pour over the chocolate: Pour the water caramel over the chocolate and let stand for three minutes, before whisking to combine.
- Add the butter: Add the butter, piece by piece. After each addition, whisk to combine.
- Whisk until smooth: Continue until all the butter has been added and the consistency is that of golden syrup.
- Glaze the cake: Pour the ganache over the cake.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment