Yesterday my family and friends celebrated my father´s 50th birthday. All in all we invited his closest friends and the whole family over to our house and we had a huge barbecue. For dessert I first planned to make my mascarpone and strawberry cake but then my father wished for something chocolaty combined with bananas. This is how I came up with this recipe. It´s a really delicious almond cocoa sponge topped with bananas and vanilla pudding and last but not least glazed with a rich chocolate ganache. I thought it was a really nice change, since I mostly make fruity cream cakes…
This is what you will need
For the ganache
- 250ml heavy cream
- 400g chocolate finely chopped
Bring heavy cream to a boil. Then pour it over the finely chopped chocolate in a medium sized bowl. Let it rest for approx. 3 minutes…don´t touch it before! Then stir your ganache using a spoon until all the chocolate pieces have melt and ganache resembles creamy.
For the sponge
- 6eggs
- 150g sugar
- 1 tbs. vanilla sugar
- 75g flour
- 75g cornstarch
- 1tsp. baking powder
- 25g cocoa powder
- 50g grated almonds
Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Separate eggs. Whisk egg whites until stiff. Mix egg yolks, vanilla sugar and sugar in a separate bowl until light yellow and creamy. Combine cornstarch, flour, baking powder, almonds and cocoa powder in a small bowl. Fold dry ingredients into egg yolk mixture. And last but not least fold in stiff egg whites using as spatula. Fill dough into a parchment paper covered cake tin and bake in oven for about 20 minutes.
For the filling
- 6 bananas
- 3 tbs. lemon juice
- 400ml of milk
- 50g sugar
- 1 package of vanilla pudding
- 100 ml heavy cream
Cook vanilla pudding as instructed on the package (use 400 ml of milk and 50g of sugar instead).
Let pudding cool out. Meanwhile whisk heavy cream until whipped, then fold into pudding using a spatula. Half bananas and lay on the bottom of the almond sponge. Brush bananas with lemon juice, so they won´t turn brown.
Spread vanilla pudding cream on top and lay other half of the sponge on top.
Whip chocolate ganache using a spoon and spread it on top of your cake. Now you can decorate as you prefer…
I used brittles and raspberries which looked divine, but you can also chop up bananas and sprinkle your cake with nuts, almonds or decorate it with chopped pistachios.
Enjoy,
xx
Nadja
