Chocolate Banana Cake

This is yet another Banana cake from my drafts. I made it for my daughter's 10th month birthday. I can't believe she'll be 1 very soon. I've already started thinking about what to do for her birthday. Pinterest has been a great resource and I've found tons of ideas for the party. I still have to come up with a theme and make a list of everything else that needs to be done before the d-day. I will keep you posted on that. In the mean time enjoy this super moist and delicious banana cake.

I think this will be my go-to banana cake recipe (using egg) going forward. This cake uses eggs and whipping the egg whites before adding to the batter makes the cake moist and light. Recipe is from BBC goodfood. It had a sour cream based icing with dried banana chips on top, but I made a simple butter-cream cheese icing instead.

Ingredients:

Self Rising Flour - 1¼cup (175gms) (See below on how to make your own self rising flour)

Sugar - ¾cup + 1tbsp (175gms+1tbsp)

Baking Soda - ½tsp

Chocolate Chips - ½cup (100gms)

Cocoa Powder - ¼cup

Eggs - 3, 2 separated

Bananas - 2 medium mashed (175gms)

Milk - ¼cup (50ml)

Oil - ½cup (100ml)

Vanilla - 1tsp

Icing:

Cream cheese - ¼cup, softened

Butter - ¼cup, softened

Heavy Cream - ½cup

Confectioners Sugar - 1cup

Vanilla Extract - ½tsp

Method:

• Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease a 9"x5" loaf pan.
• In a large bowl, mix sugar, flour, soda, cocoa and chocolate chips.
• In a medium bowl, mash the bananas and stir in the whole egg plus 2 yolks. Next add the oil and milk.
• Beat the egg whites until stiff. I used a whisk to beat the egg whites and I did what I could to get them stiff (bottom line, don't sweat too much, cake turns out great even if the whites are somewhat stiff)
• Add the banana mixture to the dry ingredients and stir in a quarter of the egg whites to loosen the mixture, then gently fold in the rest of the egg whites.
• Gently pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan and bake for 55minutes - 1hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Cool the cake in the pan in for 10 minutes before removing onto the wire rack to cool completely before icing or frosting.
• For the icing: Using a hand mixer beat butter and cream cheese until combined. Add heavy cream and beat until fluffy. Slowly add the sugar and vanilla extract and beat until you get to pourable consistency. Use immediately or refrigerate it until ready to use.
• Pour the icing over the cake. Using a veggie peeler, peel some chocolate curls on top for a fancy finish. Enjoy!!

To make your own 1Cup of Self Rising Flour: 
Combine the following:

All purpose flour - ¾cup
Baking powder - 1½tsp

Salt - ½tsp

To use all-purpose flour in this recipe: substitute with below ingredients. I did the math, so you don't have to :-)
All purpose flour - 1cup + 3tbsp
Baking powder - 2tsp
Salt - ¾tsp

Sending this over to Chef Mireille's Taste of the Tropics - Banana event.