Do you have room for cake? Room in your stomach, room in your favourite jeans, room in your fridge, room among your friends? I hope the answer is yes because one of the best things about baking cakes is mixing and matching cake, frosting, and topping. Experimentation and tasting are always encouraged!
To put this mix-and-match theory to practice, I cobbled together this 4-layers Coconut Banana Cake with Dulce De Leche & Crème Fraiche Ganache. The recipes all come from different sources but they sure mesh well together! If you recall the Cake Day shenanigan from earlier this month, I don’t blame you for wondering how I recover from cake hangover so quickly. Like I always say: share the calories, share the love. I brought my share of cakes to a race the very next day. My skating friends and I shared a moment of cake-induced euphoria. It was awesome but it also left me without cake. Bake more cake was the only solution.
If you want to try this luscious cake at home, here are the recipes I used. The coconut banana cake was based on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in Baking From My Home To Yours. I replaced brown sugar with coconut palm sugar, used buttermilk, and folded toasted coconut into the batter. The two 9-inch cakes were split in half to create four layers.
I had some leftover dulce de leche from a previous cooking project. It was key ingredient in Dan Lepard’s dulce de leche frosting set with butter and icing sugar. The recipe yielded barely enough frosting for two layers. I probably would increase the amount by 1.5 times if I am to make this again.
Banana, coconut, and dulce de leche are strong flavours. I needed another component that could stand up to them yet giving the cake a counterpoint. I found it in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s crème fraiche ganache. The tangy taste of crème fraiche and the fruity undertone of the 72% dark chocolate I used were just right. 1.5 times of the recipe was enough to frost the centre layer and the top of the cake generously.
When I assembled my cake, it was well past midnight. The rustic look served as good evidence that I had pillow and blanket on my mind. You can most certainly dress up the cake in more refined fashion, starting with properly frosting the side. A shiny chocolate mirror glaze would not be out of place either.
I’m not an advocate for emotional eating. But seeing a layered cake sitting all pretty in my fridge under a cake dome certainly brightens my day….every single time I open the fridge. Not a bad deal for a wee bit of baking!
