Banana Nutella Cake

19 October 2011

I haven't posted in a week as I was away for work. Which also means that I did not cook for a week! Although the food there in Italy was pretty good, I did miss cooking especially baking!! Coming back home, I realized I had left 3 bananas there which now were pretty ripe! I thought it really would be a shame to throw them away, especially because my husband loves them so much. So I decided, based on the recipe from the lemon/chocolate cake to try to do something good with them. And what goes better with bananas than nutella??! Unfortunately in the middle of my cooking I realized that 3 bananas were a lot and so from one cake I ended up with 2 cakes! All the better you will tell me!

So here is the recipe for a super delicious banana/nutella cake in 2 versions! (3 with the cupcakes!)

• 20 min to prepare
• 30/40 min in the oven

• 3 bowls of medium size
• 2 forks
• a bread pan (the deep rectangular ones)
• a small cake pan
• small pot

• 100g butter
• 180g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 200g flour
• 10cl milk
• 3 tea spoons of baking powder
• a tea spoon of salt
• nutella
• Grand Marnier  
• 2 bananas 

• Soften the butter by putting it in the microwave for a few seconds.
• In a bowl, mix the butter, the sugar and the salt with a fork. Do NOT use an electric whisk. Mix it well to obtain a very homogeneous batter 
• Break the eggs and separate whites and yolks. Put the whites in a separate bowl. Put the yolks with the previous mix. Mix well.
• Add the baking powder and some flour. Mix well.
• Add some milk to render the batter softer and easier to mix. Mix well.
• Add some more flour and milk little by little. Keep on mixing the batter very well. Make sure you reach a state where the batter is very homogeneous.

Until now the recipe was common to the two cakes, now here is when it starts differing:

Version 1:

• Separate the batter in 2 and put half in another bowl.
• In the first bowl, add up 2 to 3 big spoonful of nutella (depending on how much you love nutella). Mix well with the batter. 

In the pot, cut the bananas in small slices and cook them. Don't make them boil, just put the heating plates on middle setting. When you see that the bananas are starting to be a bit liquid add a big spoonful of Grand Marnier. Mix. Note that the mix shouldn't be completely liquid, you should still have some chunks of bananas with it.

Add about 3/4 of the banana/Grand Marnier mix to the second bowl containing the other half of the batter. Mix well.
Add the remaining 1/4 of the banana Grand Marnier mix to the first bowl containing the nutella/batter mix. Mix well.
Beat the whites of the eggs and add delicately half to the nutella mix bowl and the other to the banana mix bowl.

• Butter the bread pan very well, add some flour that you spread around.
• Lay the banana mix at the bottom of the pan then add on top the nutella mix.

• Put in the oven for 45min at 175 °C.

Note that this cake will probably collapse back a bit when you take it out of the oven. Thebananas make it a bit soggy. Not anymore!! But the taste is exquisite (citing my husband who is my primary cooking critic!).

Version 2:

• In the pot, cut the bananas in small slices and cook them. Don't make them boil, just put the heating plates on middle setting. When you see that the bananas are starting to be a bit liquid add a big spoonful of Grand Marnier. Mix. Note that the mix shouldn't be completely liquid, you should still have some chunks of bananas with it. (see pictures above)
• Add the banana/Grand Marnier mix to the batter. Mix well.
• Add 2 big spoonful of nutella to the batter/banana/Grand Marnier mix. Mix well.

• Butter and flour well a cooking pan.
• Pour the mix into the pan.

• Put in the oven at 175°C for 30-35 min.

Note that the cake you obtain is very very fluffy and incredibly light!

Here is a tip to make sure your cake is done: take a knife and dip it in the cake. If you pull it out and the blade is clean, your cake is down. If not you need to leave it in the oven!!

Update 22 October 2011: turning the cake into cupcakes!

I have redone this recipe today for my husband who was begging for it and bettered it to make it a bit less soggy! And I was successful (the ingredients and quantities above are the updated ones).

It also turns out that I think that this is a perfect recipe to take with you for a snack at school or work, so I turned them into cupcakes! And the result was just SO YUMMY!!

See for yourself!

       Looks good huh??