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Banana and Chocolate Crunch Cake with Graham Cracker Frosting

In case you missed it, Saveur Magazine recently announced that my blog is a finalist for the “Best Baking & Desserts Blog” award in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards. I got the notification email from Saveur a few days before the news was made public the following Monday — it was around 9:30AM, and I was sitting in a meeting with my coworkers discussing the intern role we were hoping to fill, when my phone buzzed with a new email contaning the subject line:


You know how in movies sometimes, when somebody receives any kind of shocking news, everything else goes blurry… the lights fade, the sounds mute, and there’s a strange ringing sound in your ears? Well, that’s kinda what happened to me! I spent the rest of the meeting fighting the urge to grab my phone, run out the room, shriek and do several cartwheels down the hallway. When the meeting finally ended, I took a couple of deep breaths, shakily opened the email, did a little jig, and spent the rest of the day grinning like a maniac.

I wish I could have ended there, but something odd happened. Later in the day, as the glow of the news faded, I proceeded to go into a weird state of denial. I spent the rest of the weekend in a mild state of quiet panic, regretting telling the handful of people I'd told since I was somewhat convinced that the entire thing was a cruel joke or hoax. I only finally chilled the frig out when, on Monday, I officially saw my blog listed along with the other finalists.

And if I sound absolutely crazy to you, it’s only because this nomination really, truly means the world to me. The Saveur Blog Awards are the equivalent of the Oscars in the food blogging world, and there’s really nothing like it — to have such a legitimate food magazine recognize the work that us bloggers do is an incredible honor. There’s even a big awards ceremony! It’s the one opportunity to finally meet all the folks and bloggers I’ve been following for years and years, all in one place, celebrating each others’ work.

This nomination is especially meaningful for me because, a few years ago, when I was first nominated in 2013 for the Best Baking & Desserts Blog Award, I wasn’t able to attend since the ceremony that year coincided with a rare family visit. I really, really regretted not being able to go — I felt like I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime, to say the least. I really didn’t think I would ever have the chance again, since it’s incredibly difficult to be re-nominated! So I cannot emphasize how grateful and thankful I am to have just made it to the finalists again this year (though of course, I wouldn’t mind if you took the time to vote for me in my category, winkwink). I can finally go to the ceremony!!! And of course, there’s no way I’m missing it this year, come hell or high water. Really. I think the only thing that could potentially stop me is a zombie apocalypse. (And gosh, I said really a bunch of times in that paragraph, didn't I? Sorry.)

To officially celebrate making it to the finals, I whipped up this wonderful banana and chocolate crunch cake. I’ve been wanting to make a banana cake for some time now to get rid of the crazy stack of frozen black bananas in my freezer. The banana cake recipe is adapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook, whose recipe for banana cake is the best I’ve tried — the final product straddles the line between a banana bread and cake, maintaining all the fudgy denseness that I love from banana bread but light enough to be able to eat and layer with a generous amount of frosting. To make it a little extra special, I decked the top of each cake with a generous amount of Valrhona chocolate crunch pearls (literally rice puffs covered in Valrhona chocolate), which gave the cakes the texture of a Nestle Crunch bar.

As for the frosting… can we talk about this frosting??? Because it’s graham cracker frosting. It turns out that if you mix together any kind of cookie crumbs with a generous portion of milk, you can basically make cookie butter of your choice. You know, like Biscoff or Speculoos spread??? Imagine the world of possibilities though: cookie butter made from Oreos, chocolate and mint Milanos, those schoolboy cookies, and MORE. And you know what happens when you mix said cookie butter with some unsalted butter and a touch of sugar? You get cookie butter frosting. It’s amazing. In this case, I thought honey graham crackers would work best with the banana and chocolate cake. So yep, this is a banana and chocolate crunch cake slathered in graham cracker butter frosting. Oooh, baby, baby.

And again, thank you to everybody who took the time to nominate me. This cake is for you. And even if you didn't, please take the time to check out all the wonderful bloggers who were also shortlisted. It's an incredibly, incredibly talented and creative bunch and I'm honored to be a part of the ranks.


Some baker's notes:

• Plan ahead for this one and use the ripest bananas you can find for this recipe. Buy bananas that are ripe and let them get overly black and brown — the riper they are, the more sugar in the fruit, and the more flavorful and caramelized the cake's flavor will be. Epicurious even has a guide that tells you how far in advance you should buy bananas and where you should them to get them to their ideal state. And if you're just not a planner, you can always use this neat trick from the Kitchn to ripen them in the oven. 


• Valrhona chocolate pearls are available online at Valrhona's online store, or at Alternatively, you can find some in the chocolate and bulk section of Whole Foods supermarkets.


• If you want to instead use store-bought cookie spread like Biscoff or Speculoos instead of making your own, feel free to do so, but be sure to omit all the sugars added with the butter in the frosting recipe. Even if you do this, however, it will result in a much sweeter frosting than the one from the recipe I provide. I like making my own cookie butter because I can control the amount of sugar that goes in it (I prefer to make one that is less sweet than the store-bought version) and avoid the funky hydrogenated oils, though it admittedly doesn't last as long as the store-bought stuff.

get the recipe »

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Best ever Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

 The Carrot Cupcake
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Vegetable Oil
3 Large Eggs
A pinch of Salt
1/2 teaspoon Bicarb Soda
2 cups Self Raising Flour
2 cups finely grated Carrot
1/2 cup Walnuts, finely chopped
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Nutmeg

The Cream Cheese Frosting

300g Icing sugar
125g Cream Cheese, cold
50g Unsalted Butter, room temp

Method

1.) Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2.) Finely grate the carrots until you get around 2 cupfuls of grated carrots.


3.) Beat the sugar and oil together until thick


4.) Add 1 egg at a time and keep beating until smooth


5.) Add in the Salt, Bicarb Soda, Carrots, Flour and Spices (the nutmeg & cinnamon)



6.) Use an electric mixer to beat all the ingredients together until batter is well mixed and smooth. (you can mix batter together with a spoon, however this will be extremely tedious and difficult because the carrots are heavy to mix through)


7.) Place batter in paper cupcake holders in a cupcake tray.

If you dont have any paper cupcake holders, like me, you must OIL VERY WELL the cupcake baking tray using a brush. (see picture below) This is so you can take out the baked cupcake without breaking it apart.



8.)  Bake for 15- 20 minutes until light golden, or until you poke a small stick into the cupcake (I usually use a chopstick) and no batter sticks to it.


Also, you may use your finger and press the middle of the cupcake to see if it springs back.

Note: Baking time may vary, mine took 5 minutes longer to bake. Just make sure to use the described methods above to test the cupcake. THESE TECHNIQUES APPLY TO ALL CUPCAKE BAKING.

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Balzano Apple Cake

While the contestants on MasterChef was shucking their 4-dozen oysters to make oyster terrines on T.V, I was busy in the kitchen slicing my apples as finely as I could. While my job is not quite comparable to their task, I was almost losing my patience and thinking in my head, Ill know better to stick with banana cakes next time!

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Banana Mango Cake

Banana Mango Cake
Inspired by How to be a Domestic Goddess

• 175g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 50g unsalted butter, melted
• 50ml grapeseed oil (or similar neutral cooking oil)
• 1/4 cup yoghurt (I used greek yoghurt)
• 150g sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 small, very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed
• 1 medium sized mango (Updated 8/12/2010: its Mango not Banana - sorry for the typo!)
• (optional) a handful of chopped pecans (just because I found them in the pantry)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest.

2. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well.

3. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, grapeseed oil, yoghurt and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas and mangoes (cut into small cubes)

4. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the pecans (optional) and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit.

5. Scrape into the loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1-1 1/4 hours. When its ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish.

6. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly or thinly sliced, as you prefer.

Available link for download