Chocolate Banana Cake

I haven't been blogging for ages now :p but today I have a good reason to write again. My friends on facebook were asking me for recipes on some of the things I made. One of them is this chocolate banana cake. So I thought I might as well post it here on my blog.

So to you guys out there, hope you like it :)



Ingredients:

4 bananas, sliced


Cakes:

170g butter, softened

225g granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla essence

120ml sour cream

330g all purpose flour

1 ½ tsp baking soda

100g cocoa powder

2 - 3 mashed bananas

Chocolate Cream:

750ml whipping cream

300g semisweet chocolate, chopped

Chocolate Ganache:

125ml whipping cream

125g dark chocolate, chopped

Method:

Cake:

Cream butter with sugar in a bowl, until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then vanilla essence. Beat in sour cream. Combine flour, baking soda and cocoa powder in another bowl. Then add in to the creamed mixture in 3 additions alternately with 2 additions of the mashed bananas. Mixing just until flour is incorporated. Spoon into 2 greased 8.5 inch spring form pans.

Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 35 – 40 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Let cool on rack for 20 minutes. Remove from the pans and let cool completely.


Chocolate Cream:

In a saucepan, bring half of the cream to boil. Remove from heat immediately and pour over the chopped chocolate in bowl, whisking until chocolate melted. Set aside for it to cool or alternately refrigerate until chilled, whisking it every now and then.

Remove from the fridge and using an electric mixer, beat chocolate mixture on medium speed just until ridges hold shape. Beat in remaining cream just until soft peaks form.


Dark Chocolate Ganache:

Bring cream to boil. Pour over chocolate in a bowl. Whisking until chocolate melted. Let cool for 20 minutes or until room temperature. Do not over whisked, or it will become whipped cream.



Cake Assembly:

Slice the cakes in half horizontally. Place a top layer, cut side up, on plate. Spread top with a layer of chocolate cream, cover with single layer of sliced bananas, leaving 1 cm border around. Cover with a bottom cake layer, cut side down. Repeat with cream and bananas.

Repeat with remaining cake, cream and bananas.

Using palette knife, cover cake smoothly with remaining chocolate cream (if there’s any leftover). Refrigerate until firm, about 1 – 2 hours.

Remove cake from the fridge and pour the ganache over the centre of the cake, spreading it to edge with clean palette knife. Gently cover the whole cake with ganache and refrigerate it until firm.