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Banana Chocolate Chunk Cake

 

I’ve been wanting to share this cake for a while now, as I think a good moist banana cake recipe can be hard to come by. It contains minimal sugar, as well as probiotics from yoghurt and lots of iron-rich dark chocolate that oozes out when you cut into it, all of which qualifies it as a pretty special cake in my book.  Another thing that makes this cake unique is the cinnamon and chocolate topping. Warming cinnamon and bitter dark chocolate complement each other well, especially when carried in a sweet banana batter. 

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If you prefer your banana cake without chocolate, you can just omit it from the recipe knowing that it will work just fine. If you want to use milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate, that will work too, however whatever flavour you use, make sure it is good quality, because life is too short for bad chocolate. 

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I like to make this in a large 25cm tin and serve it warm as a pudding, topped with yoghurt, but my kids always eat it with runny cream and ice-cream. If you would like a thicker cake, you can either double the recipe, or bake it in a smaller tin. Keep in mind with both these options the cake will take longer to cook, so make sure you compensate for this at baking time. 

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Serves 8

 

Ingredients 

For the cake 

• 125 grams butter, softened 

• ½ cup raw sugar 

• 1 large free-range egg 

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

• 1 ½ cups mashed banana (about 3 bananas) 

• ½ cup plain yoghurt 

• ¼ cup milk 

• 1 teaspoon baking soda 

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

• 1 ½ cups flour 

• 1 teaspoon baking powder 

• 100 grams dark chocolate of your choice broken into bite size pieces - I use Whittaker's 70 % dark chocolate 

For the topping 

• 25 grams extra dark chocolate, cut into small shards  

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon 

 

Method 

1. Preheat oven to 170.C and prepare a 25cm cake tin by greasing the sides and placing baking paper over the bottom. 

2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again. The mixture will separate and look awful, but don’t worry, it will all come together at the end. Add the banana and yoghurt and fold through. 

3. Pour the milk into a small bowl or cup and dissolve the baking soda into it, stirring well. Set aside. 

4. Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the banana mixture with the milk and baking soda. Gently fold everything together until everything is combined, adding the chocolate chunks once the wet starts coming together with the dry. It is important not to overmix the batter or the cake could become gluey.   

5. Pour the batter into a cake tin and smooth flat. Mix the topping ingredients together and sprinkle over the top. Bake on the middle shelf of your preheated oven for around 30 minutes, or until the cake bounces back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. If it happens to spike into a piece of melted chocolate just try another area.  

6. Enjoy warm as a pudding or allow to cool. Eat within three days. 

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** To stop the chocolate from sinking to the bottom of the cake when it bakes is to take a tablespoon of the measured flour and coat the chocolate chunks with it. This should help to suspend them in the batter as they cook. Of course, a layer of chocolate on the bottom of a cake is never a bad thing! 

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