Banankage (Banana Walnut Cake with Chocolate Ganache)
A beautiful cake with delicious banana and walnut flavor, a light dash of cardamom, and rich chocolate ganache on top.
Ingredients
CAKE BATTER
- 3 bananas *you can use frozen bananas for this; the weighed amount will vary depending on the size of the bananas, but anywhere from 250g - 375g of banana should be fine!
- 120 ml vegetable oil
- 120 ml milk *room temperature
- 3 large eggs *room temperature
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 100 grams brown sugar
- 100 grams granulated sugar
- 250 grams flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp cardamom
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 100 grams walnut pieces *optional, but highly recommended!
CHOCOLATE GANACHE
- 230 grams dark chocolate chips/dark chocolate bar, chopped *yes, this is a lot of chocolate - we like the top layer of ganache to be really thick! Feel free to make a thinner layer depending on how much chocolate you would like, just keep the ratio of chocolate to cream about 1:1
- 240 ml heavy cream
- Pinch of salt
TOPPING
- Extra chopped walnuts for decoration *optional
- Flaky salt *optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Prepare a 10" springform pan by greasing the sides and adding parchment paper to the bottom of the pan. You can use a different cake tin (such as a square or a rectangular one), keeping in mind the amount of batter may not fit in smaller tins!
- Mash the bananas in a medium sized mixing bowl well; they can be a little lumpy, but there shouldn't be any large chunks.
- Add in the other wet ingredients to the bananas - vegetable oil, milk, eggs, vanilla extract, brown sugar, and granulated sugar.
- Whisk well to combine everything.
- In a separate larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom, and salt. Whisk together so there are no lumps in the mixture.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, whisking together until everything is just combined.
- Add in walnut pieces (if they are quite large, you can chop them up smaller before adding them in!) and fold into the mixture using a rubber spatula.
- Transfer the mixture to your baking tin, scraping the sides of the bowl to make sure you get all the batter into the tin.
- Put the cake in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the top is evenly browned and a knife or a cake tester in the middle of the cake comes out clean. If it's still wobbly or the knife has batter on it, give it more time in 5 minute increments.
- Let cool for around 5 minutes in the pan; then remove from the springform and place to cool completely on a wire rack.
- While the cake is cooling, prepare the chocolate ganache topping. Start by measuring out your heavy cream in a heat proof bowl and heating it either in the microwave or using a double boiler on the stove.
- Once the cream is steaming, remove from heat/microwave. Add in chocolate chips/chopped chocolate and let sit for 5 minutes.
- After 5 minutes, stir the mixture. It should be smooth and shiny. If there are still unmelted chocolate pieces, pop it in the microwave or heat over the double boiler until those pieces have melted.
- Set the ganache aside to cool; you can also pop it in the fridge to cool down faster, just make sure you pay attention to how set it is, as you want it to still be spreadable onto the cake!
- After the cake has cooled down, spread the ganache over the top of the cake. We like to make a swirl pattern on the top.
- Add extra chopped walnuts and some flaky salt, if you want, over the top. Slice and enjoy! We do keep this in the fridge because of the chocolate ganache, but if you don't add that to the top, you can keep the cake at room temperature.
