chocolate chip banana and chocolate marble bundt

Another one of my "what will I do with those rotting bananas?" bakes. This time I had 4 bananas so I decided to bring out the big bundt pan.

I was originally just going to bake Dollybake's chocolate chip banana bundt which I almost baked successfully last year but I was struck with the idea of a chocolate and banana marble cake so I adapted the recipe to suit.

The resulting cake is dense. I'm not entirely sure if that's a bad thing as banana cakes generally have a heavier crumb anyway. This bundt is packed with banana and chocolate flavour and the chocolate chips and thick sugar crust provide a good texture contrast. Perhaps 4 large bananas is a bit overkill and 3 would have done fine, or I shouldn't have added so much milk when I incorporated the cocoa powder.

It's not a huge deal though as my Mum and I managed to eat about half of the cake by ourselves within 24 hours. Greedy? No..... *cough*

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks as I'm going away this weekend for my birthday. Woohoo! See you on the other side :)

Chocolate chip banana and chocolate marble bundt

Recipe adapted from Dollybakes

bundt:

500g self raising flour

300g golden caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

large pinch of salt

200g unsalted butter, melted (and cooled!)

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

4 large brown bananas, mashed

3 tbsp milk mixed with 3 tbsp cocoa powder

100g milk chocolate chips

100g white chocolate chips 

fudgy chocolate icing/drizzle:
(my Granny's recipe)

1.5oz (about 40g) butter or margarine

1 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp milk 
4oz (about 100g) icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease your 2.4L/10"/10 cup bundt tin with cake release spray and a light coating of flour. Tap out any excess flour over the sink.

Sift the flour and sugar into a large bowl. Mix in the melted butter and eggs, followed by the mashed bananas. Divide the mixture in half and add the cocoa powder/milk paste to one half and mix thoroughly. Add milk chocolate chips to the plain batter and white chocolate chips to the chocolate batter and gently fold in. 

Spoon heaps of alternating batter into the bundt tin and swirl a knife through it all to create a marbled effect. Bake in the centre of the oven for 1hr 15 minutes until well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

For the fudgy chocolate drizzle, heat up the cocoa powder, milk and butter in a saucepan on the hob. Take it off the heat when the mixture almost comes to a boil and add the icing sugar. Mix until smooth, glossy and slightly thickened and drizzle over the cooled cake.

chocolate malt marble bundt

It was my Mum's birthday at the weekend so naturally she deserved a beauty of a cake. I have to admit I think I did pretty well this year.

After seeing a malted chocolate bundt cake on Chocolate Log Blog a few weeks ago I immediately bookmarked it with Mum's birthday in mind. She loves chocolate, Horlicks, maltesers and bundts so it was a match made in heaven.

The only substitutions I made were plain flour instead of half plain/half wholemeal spelt flour and golden syrup instead of mesquite powder. I also veered off track with the icing glaze. I had milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate so I was unsure about using Choclette's method of melted sugar in case it ended up being overly sweet. Instead I followed a similar icing in my Mary Berry book which adds icing sugar at the end, thinking it would be easier to adjust the sweetness. However when I tasted the icing it just tasted really water-y, not particularly appetising. 

At this point I went freestyle and chucked in extra chocolate, butter and icing sugar and sifted in some cocoa powder which boosted the chocolate flavour and deepened the colour. This resulted in a slightly fudgier runny icing, definitely preferable to what I started out with. It looked lovely and glossy poured over the cake too.

I slightly over cooked my bundt at the crust/the top when it's in the oven (9 months later and I still forget this oven cooks things quicker) but the ground almonds and yoghurt in the batter kept the cake moist. As you can see there were satisfying puddles of icing around the edge of cake stand which were perfect for adding to any dry bits. Or just scooping up to eat from a teaspoon!

It's always exciting cutting into a marble cake to reveal what pattern lurk inside. It's such a simple yet striking effect. Chocolate and malt is a winning flavour combination too. The malt flavour definitely comes through in the pale mixture which elevates it beyond your standard chocolate and vanilla marble sponge. I highly recommend this cake if you want something easy and tasty to bake yet stunning to look at. Cheers for the recipe Choclette!

On a side note, are people finding my main text difficult to read at the moment? I've always used Courier as my blog font and have never had any issues with it, but it started looking patchy and faint last week on my laptop. It doesn't look any different on my work desktop computer though. Weird.

Chocolate and vanilla marble loaf

I'm getting so behind with posting.... again. This was actually baked a day or so after the macarons, which were also posted a week late. Must do better!

I spotted a few of these marble loaves around the blogosphere as part of the Weekly Bake Off a while ago and quickly bookmarked it. Disappointly my marbling didn't work particularly well. I alternated layers of the mixtures as I filled the tin, hoping it would create a jazzy zebra effect but it didn't work at all. Any tips?

The cake was also on the dry side but I think that was entirely my fault as it was left in the oven for too long (darn internet distractions!)

On the plus side the fudgy icing was amazing! My mum used to put similar icing on chocolate cakes when I was little. It's so good it could probably be eaten on its own. So be warned, you may want to make a double batch ;)

You should also double the amount of white chocolate for the zig zag decoration as you may find yourself eating large spoonfuls of it. It is white chocolate after all...

The recipe can be found here if you fancy having a go. I definitely want to have another shot at achieving the zebra marble effect.

On a completely different topic, how amazing has Team GB been at the Olympics this weekend? Even as a massive Roger Federer fan, I could not have been more delighted for Andy Murray today.

Chocolate and vanilla marble cake and some cupcakes

Last Friday was spent baking with my two best friends. (How on earth did a week pass so quickly?!)Our bake-athons don't happen very often anymore, due to us being boring adults living in different places, but they are still fun when they do happen.

Apologies for the photo quality. These were all taken with my phone.

This is a classic compromise cake. Chocolate or vanilla? Both! Pink or chocolate icing? Both! Marshmallows, chocolate stars or Barbie sprinkles for decoration? CHUCK IT ALL ON!

We also baked some marshmallow cupcakes from the first Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. The melted marshmallow for the cupcake centre is the most unruly thing I've ever worked with. It was near impossible to put it inside the cupcake so we gave up after a four and put jam in the rest. Half the batch were finished with pink vanilla butter icing and marshmallows and the rest were covered with a layer of marzipan.

I love how it looks like a plain chocolate cake, but all is revealed when you cut into it.

There's always something exciting about a marble cake because you can never really predict how the marbled effect will turn out. Well, I find it exciting. Maybe I don't get out enough?(!)

We enjoyed a slice of cake each after dinner with a cuppa.

I enjoyed our marble cake so much that I made another one this week at home. Unfortunately it got devoured before my camera got anywhere near it.

Chocolate and vanilla marble cake

We used the one-weight method for our cake where the weight of the eggs are equal to the weight of the butter, sugar and self-raising flour . We used three eggs which weighed roughly 175g/6oz so that was our weight for everything else.

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and grease and line two 7 inch tins. Creamed the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then gradually added the eggs and fold in the flour. Divide the mixture into two bowls, adding cocoa powder (to taste) to one half and a few drops of vanilla extract to the other half. Add a small amount of milk to the chocolate mixture to slacken it after adding the cocoa powder.  Haphazardly dollop the mixtures alternately into the two tins and bake them in the centre of the oven for roughly 20-25 minutes until springy to touch. Leave the cakes to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Once cool, sandwich the sponges together with vanilla butter icing and ice the top layer with chocolate butter icing. Decorate with marshmallows, sprinkles or whatever you fancy!