Chocolate Banana Cake

I love this picture!

What are the odds of my hubby coming home and looking around expectantly, popping his head into this picture just as I was snapping it? *grin* The best thing i like about the the pix is it really says a lot about my hubby HAHAaha (he hardly reads my blog so i'm pretty safe here heeeee) He's always snooping and sniffing around when I'm cooking, pinching here and there and always enthusiastic to try anything I whip up. He's my number one fan! (or victim hee hee). I think I like to cook coz I like to feed him and see that satisfied look on his face when his tummy is stuffed.

I'm still trying variations of Chocholate cake recipes. This recipe is from Baking 911. It's suppose to be a 'sinfully rich and moist cake'.

Recipe:
Dry ingredients:
2 cups flour
Whole-grain wheat pastry flour (couldnt find this anywhere so I just used all purpose)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup lightly mashed bananas ( I used pisang emas)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup lowfat buttermilk (I substituted with 1 cup milk + 1 teaspoon lemon juice)
1 large egg
2 large egg whites
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease cake tin.
Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In another bowl, with a hand held mixer, beat the wet ingredients for about 1 minute, until frothy.
Pour wet ingredients into the dry and quickly combine with a large spoon. Do not overmix.
Pour into cake tin and bake for about 25 minutes.
Cool in pan on wire cake rack for 10 minutes before removing.

I STILL have not mastered the art of baking. SIGH. It seems that once you get something right, something else goes wrong! This time my cake rose properly with very minimal cracks. Hurrah! I was pretty happy coz my past cakes had crackes and peaks - very volcano looking :(

It looked a bit dense, not velvety and crumbly when I sliced thru. I think it's coz I didnt use the specified flour. Apparently whole wheat pastry flour is low- gluten so it can give a more tender outcome. Oh dear, I always find these things out the hard way :(.

The taste also wasnt as banana-rish as I liked. My bananas were pretty ripe so it could be the type of banana I used. Maybe next time I'll try the large Montel kind. Hmmm and it wasnt sweet enough. Clever old me cut down about 1/4 of the sugar coz I read other banana cake recipes where ppl commented that they cut down on the sugar and the cakes still came out just right. So I thought to cut down here as well coz the bananas would be pretty sweet already. Anyway, I sprinkled icing sugar on the cake and this gave it the sweetness it needed.

All in all I give myself only 5/10 until I try again with the proper ingredients.