Chocolate Banana Cake

After baking Chocolate Orange Ring Cake, I decided to try another recipe from the book Easy Chocolate. The Chocolate Banana Cake looked very pretty with streaks of melted white chocolate on top and a sprinkling of whole pecans. As they say, don't judge a book by its cover. Or in this case, don't judge a cake by its photo.

Fortunately, the two cakes from this book taste as good as they look. After all, chocolate and bananas can't go wrong. Speaking of chocolate and bananas, there is something wicked that I love.

A while back, I had some leftover ganache in the fridge and some bananas in the pantry. I warmed up the ganache and dipped the bananas into the warm chocolate. God! I swore I was sent straight up to heaven! I tell you, I could have eaten the whole bunch of bananas. But of course I didn't. So, if you are feeling blue, eat some bananas dipped in melted chocolate. It beats Prozac anytime. But there are side effects. You become fat like me muahahaha....sobs......

Back to the cake. It was the long Merdeka (Independence Day) weekend and I was in the mood to bake. I had a small comb of bananas, about 8 medium sized ones. Enough for two banana cakes. One cake was a plain but awesome banana cake (coming up in next post) and the other, this chocolaty one.

The plain banana cake calls for 170g butter (and some sour cream) while this one 175g butter (no sour cream). One block of butter is 250g and I needed in total 345g. So instead of taking out 95g from another block, I decided to sub the remaining butter with sour cream.

Another thing I did was to cream the butter and sugar by hand. Why? I was not in the mood to wash the electric beater. I want to bake but I don't want to wash hah..hah... Besides, I have seen Rachel Allen cream her butter and sugar just by using a wooden spoon and I reckon I could do the same.

It is tiring though but on the bright side, I did burn some calories to allow for tasting the cake. But seriously, I won't do that again because I find that the mixer obviously does I better job than I did.

Although I have white chocolate on hand, I decided not to use it. I am not very fond of white chocolate as I find it much too sweet. After all, this cake by itself is already awesome and it did not need anything else. 

As the cake was baking, the aroma of bananas and chocolate coming from my kitchen was so soothing hah..hah.. Needless to say, I was in a very good mood the whole day. If my partner had asked me to wash his car, I would have done so with a smile on my face. I was that happy. But that ended the next day. Back to work. Arrrrgghhh!!!! But hey, today is Friday. Yipeeee!!!!

Chocolate Banana Cake 

Recipe source : Adapted from Easy Chocolate (page 24)

Ingredients :
- 4 ripe bananas (peeled weight about 220g), mashed
- 80g butter (original recipe 175g)
- 125g sour cream (original recipe none)
- 120g muscavado sugar (original recipe 175g)
- 2 eggs, beaten
-225g self-raising flour, sifted
- 55g plain chocolate, grated

Method :
1. Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy.
2. Gradually add beaten eggs.
3. Stir in the mashed bananas.
4. Fold in flour alternately with sour cream in three additions, until just combined (do not overmix)
5. Lastly fold in grated chocolate.
6. Pour batter into a lined loaf pan and bake at 160C for 45-55 minutes or until skewer inserted into centre of the cake comes out clean.

This post is linked to Cook-Your-Books #16 hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.