Chocolate Banana Layered Cake

It's been quite sometime back since i last baked a layered cake, i checked thru my posts, the last one which i did was a Mango Mousse Cake about 4 months ago. I probably will make one for special occasions like birthdays, otherwise i dont think i will do that.. not that i dont like baking layered cakes, it's just that it's quite time consuming. But this time i made this chocolate banana cake is not for someone's birhday but simply for blogging purpose and practise on my ganache. As i was telling someone on her blog the other day, i will find my hands shaking and my heart beating when pouring the ganache and she told me better not, otherwise it will all show up on the cake, haha! I'm still a little doubt about the right consistency of the ganache, i just make sure that it's not too thick for easy pouring , though i find the taste is really superb, i still think my ganache handling is really messy and far from perfect.


I baked the sponge in a 10" cake pan , the sponge is not really high so i just made one layer of the filling. I used the same sponge cake recipe from my mango mousse cake , only with some added cocoa powder this time.If you have your own cake recipe, you can always use that and make 2 layers, just double the filling recipe, the ganache should be enough.  This is considered quite a big cake for me ,most of that has been distributed to friends to help me to finish the cake. There's no exact amount of bananas to be used to fill in the cake, i used about 6-7 ripe bananas here, each sliced into 2.



Ingredients for sponge cake
 3 large eggs yolks
 1 1/2 oz sugar
 3 1/2 oz water
 1 oz corn oil
 3 oz superfine flour
 1 oz cocoa powder
 3/4 tsp soda bicarbonate

 Ingredient B
 6oz egg whites
 3/4 tsp cream of tartar
 1 1/2 oz sugar

Method:
1. Mix all of ingredient A till smooth. Set aside.
2. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar from ingredient B on high speed. After 2 mins, add sugar , continue beating till stiff
3. Pour the mixture of (1) into (2) and fold gently. Bake in a moderate oven for 45 mins or until cooked.
4. remove from oven and overturn cake to cool.
5. After cool, slice cake into two separate layers

For Choc Banana Layer
Ingredients A
38gms scraped dark chocolate
7 gms cocoa powder
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 plus 1/4 tsp gelatine powder
21/4 tbsp full cream milk
1/2 tbsp chocolate emulco
1/2 tbsp Baileys

Ingredients B
225mls non diary whipping cream

Method:
1. Melt all of ingredients A(over steam of water) except Baileys and leave to cool. Add in Baileys after cooling.
2. Whisk the non diary whipping cream ( ingredient B) until medium stiff peak and fold over no 1.This will be the chocolate mousse
3. Spread a layer of the chocolate mousse on 1 piece of sponge,  add the sliced bananas, followed by another layer of mousse and place the 2nd piece of sponge on top. Cover the entire cake with mousse and freeze for an hour.

For Ganache:
210mls diary cream
50gms butter
260gms scraped chocolate

Heat the diary cream and butter gently in pot. When hot, add in the scraped chocolate. Cool ganache and pour over entire cake.