Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients
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Recipe Reviews
Zosia from Toronto, ON
This rather impressive cake (it’s very tall!) includes 3 of the authors’ favourite elements, bananas, peanut butter and chocolate, and each are well represented. Creamy peanut butter and chocolate fillings are sandwiched between layers of light, fluffy banana cake, frosted with milk chocolate ganache buttercream and glazed with intense, bittersweet chocolate.
The cake is made with the usual creaming method and the layers bake up quite level with the use of cake strips. It’s moist and has a good banana flavour.
The peanut butter filling is a simple blend of peanut butter, butter and confectioners’ sugar. The photo in the book (and on the cover) is misleading as the recipe makes only enough for a scant half cup per 8” layer ie a very thin layer. You would have to double the recipe to achieve the thickness pictured.
The chocolate ganache buttercream has a lovely, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth quality when eaten and tastes exactly like the chocolate used so make sure to use a favourite. When assembling the cake, I used the same amount for the filling as I did the peanut butter so the layers would be even.
The final touch is a thin chocolate glaze that’s the perfect consistency to cover the top of the cake smoothly and drip part way down the sides. It’s applied in 2 stages; I preferred the appearance of the cake after the first application so next time, I’ll just make a half batch. Made with bittersweet chocolate, it has a rich, intense flavour…..this will be my go-to chocolate glaze recipe from now on.
There are quite a few components to this cake but each one is easy to make. I made it a 2-day project, making the filling and ganache one day, and baking, assembling and glazing the cake the next day.
Serves 16 (any smaller, and the cake slices start to fall apart….believe me, I tried!)
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