Banana Chocolate Waffles

Woohooo... my very first foodie posting in 2011!!! I can't imagine that I've been around in blogger's world for quite a while now. My best wishes to you all who's been visiting, commenting and loving my blog(s).

I still love cooking, baking and making photo's, but there are some realities as well to be faced. We're in situation of economy crisis in Belgium,, ie. the price of gas & electricity go so high (too high), the price of gasoline is 30% up in 2 months time, and off course, not to mention the prices of (fresh)food go along with others, but the salary stays the same. Now we're trying to cut the expenses by lowing the use of electricity & car. So here I am with less cooking and baking, and also less going around with the car.
We're certain we'll pass this situation... we don't know when and how,, but we'll do our best. Stay positive & optimist!!!

Now story of baking. It's holiday for a week, time to entertain the children, especially my daughtern (6 y.o). She's a busy bee.. just like the mother.. so she needs to be kept occupied. This is then the result of our quality time, Banana Chocolate Waffles. Trust me, children love this soooo much!!!!

Ingredients:
175 gr butter, room temperature
175 gr sugar
250 gr selfraising flour
2 eggs
1 package vanilla sugar
1 ripe banana, softened
3 tablespoons chocolate sprinkles

Directions:
1.Preheat the waffle iron.
2. In a bowl  whisk the butter, sugar & vanilla sugar together.
2. Add eggs, and whisk them until smooth.
3. Add mashed banana, flour & chocolate sprinkles, mix them together until all ingredients corporated.
4. Put two spoons waffle mixture on each section of **waffle iron, then bake for about 2 minutes, remove from the iron. Do the same with the rest of the mixture until finish.

** The waffle iron that I use.

Banana Chocolate Cookies

It's been snowing very hard today. Some roads are closed, some places are unreachable due to long queue. In the weather like this I prefer to stay home. I did some cleaning here and there, played some games in facebook, hmmm couldn't go out.. terrible & boring. Then I decided to start baking in the afternoon.

Today we bake Banana Chocolate Cookies. I found the recipe from children cooking book just to make sure I won't make any mistake of baking it... *-*


Banana Chocolate Cookies
(source: book- Lekker koken voor kids)

Ingredients:
125 gr butter
125 gr yellow brown sugar
1 large egg
1 ripe banana, mashed
175 gr selfraising flour
1 theespoon speculas spices
2 eatspoons milk
100 gr chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 190°c. Stir butter and sugar thoroughly with a mixer to a light and creamy blend.

2. Add the egg and mix well. Add the mashed banana and blend until the mixture is smooth.

3. Sift the flour and speculas spices. Add the milk in so that the mixture is becoming soft. Fold through the chocolate chips.

4. Create with a dessert spoon mounds of dough on baking sheets. Ensure that sufficient space between the cookies is.

5. Bake the cookies for about 15-20 minutes or until golden bruin.

6. Take the baking sheet from oven and let cookies stand. Place the biscuits very carefully with a knife on the roster, so they can cool down.

Chocolate Banana Cake For Valentine

Yesterday I was so in de mood for valentine.. eventhough it's still a month to go.. but who cares, I wanted to make and decorate a cake.

I got the recipe for the chocolate banana cake from Joy Of Baking, then I decorated it in the style of retro with plastic icing or sometimes called as rolled fondant.. it looks soooo cool!!

I only used 1/2 of the recipe for a 20 cm diameter cake, then I cut the cake in the shape of a heart.

For the filling, I changed with white chocolate ganache using the same recipe.. but too bad I didn't wait long enough until the ganache cooling down, the filling was still melting and absorbed by the cake.. well it wasn't really succeed.

I just copied the original recipe... to save my time for typing it back.


Chocolate Banana Cake

2 cups (400 grams) granulated white sugar (I would reduce the sugar since the banana is really ripe, sweet & soft)

1 3/4 cups (245 grams) all-purpose flour

3/4 cup (75 grams) cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 medium sized bananas)

1 cup (240 ml) warm water

1/2 cup (120 ml) milk

1/2 cup (120 ml) safflower or canola oil

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Chocolate Ganache Frosting:

8 ounces (227 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, cut into small pieces

3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy whipping cream

1 tablespoon (14 gram) unsalted butter

Directions:
Chocolate Banana Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Butter, or spray with a non stick vegetable spray, a 9 x 13 inch (23 x 33 cm) pan. Set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, mashed bananas, water, milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir, or whisk, until combined. You will notice that the batter is quite thin. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. When completely cooled, frost with the Ganache.

Ganache: Place the chopped chocolate in a medium sized stainless steel, or heatproof bowl. Set aside. Heat the cream and butter in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil. Immediately pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. When Ganache has completely cooled, beat until soft and fluffy. Then spread the frosting on top of the cake. Garnish as you like.

Another Banana Cake

I already have three different recipes of banana cakes, i.e. Simply Banana Cake, Banana Coconut Cake and Banana Marble Cake. Amazingly they all have different taste and characters and I love them all.

This new recipe of banana cake is from here. Instead of making cupcakes, I made it as big cake by measuring all the ingredients doubled. This banana cake is not really sweet since it will be topped again. I subtituted the caramel and heavy cream with honey, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. It's really delicous... really worth it to try. The ice cream won't be seen on picture, since it's really hot here and it's melting straight away by the time I'm going to make picture.


Another Banana Cake
(source: foodie blogger StrawberrySays)

Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
12 tbsp butter, softened
4 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup self-rising flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp allspice
1 medium mashed overripe banana
1 cup sour cream (I didn't use)
6 tbsp milk

For topping I:
1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped until thick, mix with 3 tbsps caramel sauce
grated dark chocolate
1 or 2 medium banana(s), thinly sliced
OPTIONAL: Peanut butter, chunky or smooth

For topping II:
Whipped cream
Vanilla Ice Cream
Honey



1. Pre-heat oven to 150°C.
2. Beat butter, sugar, and eggs in a blender until light and fluffy.
3. Stir in sifted dry ingredients, bananaand milk. Pour mixture in baking pan.
4. Bake for approximately 50 minutes, or until golden brown. Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool.
5. Optional to use any topping.... they're both delicious.

Simply Banana Cake

Banana is always been our favorite fruit and we always have it at home. What happened when I have banana's over?? No problem, sometimes I make banana fritter or banana ice cream or banana cake. These light and simple banana cake is one of our favorite recipes.


Simply Banana Cake

3 ripe bananas, mashed
100 gr butter
150 gr brown sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
225 gr flour
1 eatspoon baking powder


Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sift the flour and baking powder, put aside.

2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and flufy.

3. Add the eggs and beat well.

4. Fold in the mashed bananas in the mixture.

5. Add the flour and baking powder in the mixture, mix well.

6. Pour in loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes.

Banana Coconut Cake

The recipe is originally from book of Christelle Le Ru "Simply Irresistible French Desserts". In the book the recipe is with apple, but because we all love bananas I replaced the apple with banana. So simple it is. The cake turned trully beautiful, moist and a little bit too sweet for me... **perhaps because I added bananas instead of apples.

The dessicated coconut gave a special taste to the cake and I would call it "exotic taste" but it also made it quite heavy eventhough I already reduced by halfing the amount. But for the rest the cake is really delicious and becoming another favorite cake for the whole family.


Ingredients:
3 bananas, cut into chuncks
200 gr unsalted butter, melted
230 gr white sugar
1 teasp vanilla essence
150 gr dessicated coconut (I used 75 gr)
4 eggs
200 gr selfraising flour
4 tbsps milk
coconut threads to decorate

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 160°C and grease a 23cm round baking tin.

2. Beat the melted butter together with sugar, vanilla essence and dessicated coconut.

3. Whisk in the eggs.

4. Add the flour, milk and lastly the bananas.

5. Sprinkle the bottom and sides of the prepared tin with the coconut threads. Pour the cake mixture into the tin and sprinkle with the rest of the coconut threads over the top.

6. Bake for 45 minutes or until the cake is done.

**In the recipe it mentions that the cooking time is 45 minutes on 160°c.. well, after 45 minutes, the dough was not completely raising and not done yet. So I added another 10 minutes and still not done. And because I was busy with something else during the baking, I didn't pay attention anymore to the cooking time, but I checked it often by inserting a knife to see whether the cake was completely done.

**Don't be surprised with the images featured here. I can't decide which picture looks better for this posting, dark background or soft purple background ?????

Banana Marble Cake

Finally I got the opportunity again to use my baking equipments. And this is for the first time in beginning of new year 2009.

I'm actually still lazy to bake something, but because I have overripe bananas and that is too bad to be thrown away and I know that from overripe bananas I can make something delicious. So I force myself to bake again...:o)

Most of the banana cake which I know is banana bread. I've been googling to find other recipes besides banana bread but it's quite rare to find that fits to my requirements. Because I want to make a moist and with light texture of the cake, then I try to combine using butter cake recipe and add with mashed bananas, and it works greatly. The cake turns so soft, moist and looks so beautiful with the marble look.

Here I'm sharing it with you...


Ingredients:
250 gr soft butter
200 gr sugar
4 eggs
250 self-raising flour; sifted
3-4 tablespoons milk
3 overripe banana, mashed
1 tablespoon cacao powder

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 190°C.

2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs, mix well. Then add the mashed bananas.

4. Add the flour, mix well. Pour into a 20x20 cm pan. Leave some to be added with cacao powder to make the marble textures.

5. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven.