Recipe: Banana chocolate sheet cake

A super easy, delicious and moist banana chocolate cake. No whipping or machine required!

Author: Bear Naked Food

Recipe type: Dessert, Baking

Serves: 8 - 10 pax

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (200 g) caster sugar
• 1 cup (130 g) all-purpose flour
• ⅓ cup (35 g) unsweetened cocoa powder (I’m using regular)
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 1 very ripe large banana – mashed with fork
• ½ cup (120 ml) warm water
• ¼ cup (60 ml) milk
• ¼ cup (60 ml) vegetable oil
• ¾ tsp pure vanilla extract
• 
  
• Chocolate Ganache:
• 4 oz (110 g) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
• ¾ cup (180 ml) heavy whipping cream
• ½ tbsp (7 g) unsalted butter

Full instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F.
2. In a large bowl, add in flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and baking soda and mix well. Set aside.
3. In another medium bowl, add in mashed banana, egg, milk, warm water, oil, vanilla extract and mix well.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix gently, until just combined. Do not overmix or the cake will be tough.
5. Pour the watery batter into a 20 x 20 greased square cake tin or sheet pan and bake for 25 mins or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. Let it cool in the cake tin set on a wire rack. You could choose to remove the cake from the cake tin or leave it in.
7. Prepare the chocolate ganache by melting the 3 ingredients in a microwave or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Let it cool completely.
8. Drizzle the ganache and spread all over the cake with a flat spatula or butter knife.
9. Let it set in the fridge for 30 mins before cutting.
10. Optional: top with your favorite crushed nuts (i.e almonds, walnuts, etc) or sprinkle funfetti color sprinkles all over.

Review: Delidge Silicone Mat

Hubby bought me a Delidge silicone mat in Amazon when he saw it on sale and he needs to purchase more to qualify for a free shipping weight limit. Didnt really ask for it so its really thoughtful for him to do so.

It arrived today and since i have a ready cookie dough that I'm supposed to bake for Mharcy's bday, i decided to give it a try.

This is my first time using a silicone mat so I'm only gonna test its promise of a non-stick baking. My verdict - it is indeed non-stick! A must buy coz its easy to line on a baking tray than baking paper and you saved the trees as this thing is reusable. 

I think the only thing i didnt like about it is that the size is bigger than my baking tray at home. Maybe my trays are UK sizes and this one is US, im not sure.

All in all, i'll be using this in lieu of the baking paper when doing cookies and macarons from now on. :)

Why my macarons always crack

It's been years since I first started baking macarons and up until today, I'm still getting cracked batches every now and then. It's really frustrating when you followed all the steps and technicalities and it still fails.

Today, i figured the culprit: Oven temperature. Yes, it has nothing to do the my measuring, meringue consistency or mixing. It is the oven temperature. All the while I was baking at 130C but the perfect temperature to bake in my oven (La germania Italia) is only 110C as per my Tala temperature reading. Yes I dont rely on my oven temperature gauge because it's analog and very inaccurate. I also realised that oven temperature fluctuation of 10-30 degree is normal, but note that macarons are very sensitive so you really have to make sure you achieve a steady state before popping your tray. So word of advise: if you think you did nothing wrong in your mixing, measuring and meringue, check temperature. Make sure you preheat it first and let it reach a stable state with no fluctuations in temp. If possible use a separate temperature gauge for accuracy (I'm using Tala). If you don't have one, just lower than the temp in the recipe you're using to -10 degree. If you're still getting cracks, lower it some more. 

See the temp reading in the below picture. No cracks so far. If you noticed the flat feet, that's due to overmixing. 

Halloween cookies with edible prints

Today I decided to play with edible prints because of the so little time in my hands to craft and decorate cookies. Never thought it would be that easy and I even thought it wouldn't make it to the party that night as I read online that sugar icing needs to be dried at least 24hrs. But luckily I read online that blasting a hair dryer or fan in front of it will speed up the drying process. And they were right, it only took 3hrs to dry it. So here it goes:

Finished product: 

Cutting the cookies

Cut cookies in parchment paper

Pasting edible prints in cookie using sugar icing. 

Outlining to cover edges. Need to work on the outlining part obviously but as I said, I don't have much time. Could be better.

Tada! Finished product. Not too bad right?

I used the butter cookie recipe that I posted here in my site. For the sugar icing, its basically just powdered or icing sugar and milk. Just adjust the consistency according to your liking. For this project I made 2 parts: 1 part is thicker for outlining and another part is a bit runny for flooding. 

Have a merry little christmas everyone!

I'm not sure about you but I like Christmas a lot. Not just because of the gift giving but for the joy the season brings. So here's me and my imperfect cover wishing all of my friends and readers a merry little christmas. :)

Dainty corner in the house

I'm very feminine. In love with anything girly, pink and flowery. When I realized our house cant be any messier having a 2 yr old around, I decided to just create a cozy corner somewhere where I can sit to declutter my mind every now and then. I'm imagining myself sipping coffee there every morning admiring the little order of the surroundings and maybe watch some greeneries. And of course it has to be outdoor-sy with ample sunlight. The dark moodlights in the house has taken it's toll on my eyes and my myopia is getting worse every year. :(  

I found the perfect spot in our backyard. Now all I need is  rummage through the storage and find some usable stuff I can use so I dont need to spend anything and viola! Her I am, realizing my morning coffee time in the cozy corner i put up while updating my blog and sharing toyou  my experience.

Thinking of buying some little pot of herbs to put in the void near the table for some aroma and scenery. Also looking forward for some afternoon tea here maybe with a friend or two. Standby for updates! 

De-stressing with colors

If im not baking, i'm coloring to de-stress and slow down. Here's some of my masterpieces. Look how one can be artistic when stressed! 

My little one's 2nd birthday

We had a very simple celebration for my little one's 2nd birthday. We decided not to go big because he wont appreciate it now as he is too young to understand what's going on. He even cried when we started to sing happy birthday in chorus thinking we all are scolding him. Lol. And it was also a good thing coz he was down with fever on that day and was very cranky. So the baking mom baked double chocolate almond cupcakes with meringue frosting. I also made meringue cookies for giveaways as its the very easy to make and the little one likes it too. Didnt manage to take pics of the meringue cookies though.

Bake King Singapore: A bakers heaven on earth

Wondering where I usually buy baking stuff? It's at http://www.bakeking.com.sg. A place very near from mine. They have a huge selection of baking utensils and ingredients. One of my happy place! :)

And here's my stash that time when I took these pics:

Learning Event at Shangrila Bangkok

It's a very informative and insightful event in bangkok. Thanks to EY. Key take aways for me: purpose led transformation of EY, Benchmarking ICADS, Proposal writing, turning opportunities into sales.