Cake Project - Awfully Chocolate Banana Cake!

It was a major cake making project that required several hours of committment which served one purpose - a birthday cake for my younger brother. As the name suggests, there is an awful lot of chocolate present in this cake. Layers of chocolate sponge sandwiched with chocolate mousse and fresh bananas finally glazed on the exterior with a lava of chocolate ganache. Awfully sinful indeed!

Once again, credit goes to aunty yochana whose blog I referred to for the wonderful recipe. My previous attempts on egg tarts and pandan kaya cake which came from her library of recipes churned out delicious treats and I was so looking forward to this recipe.

The process of making the cake was a tedious and a not-so-smooth-sailing one. I had some problems making the mousse and the chocolate ganache. The mousse turned out lumpy on the first attempt and I had to chuck the whole thing in the bin. As for the chocolate ganache, everything turned grainy and yucky. Once again, the bin was revisted a second time. There goes my cocoa powder! In the end, I settled for a chocolate butter glaze found on allrecipe as I had ran out of cream.

Decorating the whole cake wasn't an easy affair either. The standing chocolate pieces that circle the cake's perimeter are known as cat's toungue. It was an idea borrowed from a chocolate book that I came across in the library. To do the cat's toungue, I melted chocolate and smeared them onto a piece of greaseproof paper into oblong shapes slightly longer than the height of the cake using a spatula. The melted choclate is then left to harden. I then placed the cat's tongue in my room with the air-conditioner on to set them faster. When left in warm humid conditions, the chocolate pieces will soften and will not hold their shape well. My cat's tongue actually softened and curved outwards from the cake instead of staying upright when I left it on the dining table!

On top of the cake is six piece of square wafer biscuit truffles. Instead of the usual truffles with molten ganache centers, I bought a pack of loackers square chocolate wafers and dipped them in white chocolate. The sqaures were then piped with dark chocolate to give the truffles a finishing touch. The easiest part of all was the piping of words using white chocolate. Tada! My chocolate banana cake was completed.

My family was pretty supportive of the cake. Everyone had a huge slice. Six of us took more than half the cake and it was disappeared without a trace just the next day! Next time I shall double the volume of the chocolate mousse and use a sweeter ganache to coat the entire cake. Yummy!

The recipe can be found from Aunty Yochana's blog:
Awfully chocolate banana cake recipe