Banana Boston Cream Cake - Home Sweet Home Bake Along (9/100)

Firstly, I think the name of this cake is a complete misnomer - there's no cream, and (more importantly) there's no Boston.

I would like to propose a new name for it - Chocolate Banana Custard Cake. A more fitting, if less imaginative description, if I might say so.

Secondly, my cake looks nothing like the one in the book. Mostly due to Ganache Issues.

I don't like ganache - it usually splits, then doesn't come back together until it is far too solid to pour, it's lack of sweetener means that you need to use cheap chocolate for it to taste any good in the volumes required for this cake, and this cake has a lot of it! (So much so, that I covered it thickly, and there was still enough left over to make 7 good sized truffles. Humph)

Thirdly, overall, I don't think this is a cake I will repeat. The cake batter was so thick that it would barely spread in the tin, and the resulting cake was bumpy.Even though I baked the cake for the shorter than specified, it was dry, to the point where the custard couldn't offer much improvement.

And, as I've said, the ganache - because I used good, dark chocolate, it wasn't very sweet, it was rather bitter, and really didn't add anything to the cake - a chocolate butter cream, or a custard-whipped cream topping would have been better.

Even more telling was my colleague's feedback, "Not your best cake,"  they very kindly clarified by specifying it was the recipe not the cake, but to be honest, I wouldn't have minded, because they were right, and I like it when people feel they can offer good, honest, feedback!

So, not a great success, but given that we are 9 bakes in, that's not too shabby. Next week, we're back on familiar territory with Hazelnut and Chocolate Macaroons

Ingredients:
Sponge
100g unsalted butter, softened
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 medium banana, mashed
125g soured cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt (too much, in my opinion)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Custard
250ml whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg yolks (save the whites for next week!)
50g caster sugar
15g plain flour
15g cornflour

Ganache
400ml double cream
400g dark chocolate, chopped

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