Light Banana Sponge Cake

I have another birthday cake order, and a banana cake was requested.  As I'm coating it with chocolate ganache, I didn't want to make the traditional banana cake and wanted to make a lighter cake instead so that the over-all taste will be balanced (not too heavy and sweet).  Hence, I made a modification from this recipe, and it turns out really great!  It's light, fluffy, refreshing and very very very soft, unlike from the traditional banana cake!  I absolutely love this!

I double the ingredients for my order, and managed to get a extra small loaf from it!

Ingredients

*yields a 6" cake

50g butter 

60g cake flour

1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 ripe banana - mash into puree

3 egg yolks

55g milk

3 egg whites (A size)

50g caster sugar

6g corn starch

Method

1. Preheat oven at 140C.
2. Prepare a cake pan with removable base, don’t need to grease or line with baking paper.  Do not use a non-stick pan.  Wrap with aluminium foil as the cake will be baked by waterbath.
3. Sieve the cake flour and bicarbonate of soda together,  Set aside.
4. Melt butter in a saucepan, once it melted and simmers, immediately add in the sieved ingredients (in #3) and quickly stir well to combine. 
5. Transfer the mixture to a bigger mixing bowl and add in milk & banana puree.  Using a hand whisk, mix well to a smooth batter.  Then add in the egg yolks, 1 by 1, mixing well with each addition.  Set aside.
6. Mix sugar and corn starch together. 
7. Beat egg whites until foamy, then add in sugar and corn starch mixture gradually and continue beating until the whites reach soft peaks (meringue stand straight up with a little curve at the tip).
8. Using a hand whisk, mix the meringue into the yolk mixture via 3 batches.  Fold in the last batch with a spatula.  Fold until you do not see any meringue in the batter.
9. *Note: the batter is more runny than the usual cake batter
10. Pour the batter into cake tin, from a high height (say, 30cm from baking tin), then tap the tin few times on the table top.  This will help to release the air bubbles in the mixture.
11. Send to bake at 140C for 25mins, then at 160C for another 25mins.
12. Once baked, remove the cake from the oven immediately and drop the tin from a high height(say 30cm).  This will help to prevent shrinkage. 
13. Invert the cake to cool completely before removing it from the tin via hand un-moulding method (just like how you would remove a chiffon cake).  If you want a smooth surface, you can invert on a non-stick frying pan/cookie tray.

Important tips for this recipe:

1. Bake it over low temperature first then increase higher temperature, and always bake it at the lower rack. 

2. You need to have stable meringue; soft peaks (meringue stand straight up with a little curve at the tip).

Very very soft and 'airy'!

For my order, I toppled it up with lots of berries for the filling!

And my end-product!

All packed up nicely! :)