Banana Coconut Sponge Cake

Banana is a popular ingredient in cake baking - be it a heavy and dense butter cake, or a soft and light sponge cake 🍌 This recipe produced a banana cake that was light in texture, calories, and flavour. Just nice to serve as supper when you do not want to go to sleep with a heavy stomach 😴

Yield: 1 round cake

Pan size: 6x3" round pan

Baking temperature: Preheated oven to 170℃ switching on only the upper heating element, bake at lower rack at 170℃ for 40 minutes. Reduce temperature to 150℃ switching on both upper and lower heating coils, and bake for 20 minutes.

Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature

Using 55~57g eggs

35g organic coconut oil/mild flavour vegetable oil

60g top/cake flour

5g milk powder

1g baking powder

30g mashed banana

15g low fat milk*

5g evaporated milk*

10g golden syrup

3 egg yolks

3 egg whites

pinch of salt

30g fine sugar

15g dark brown sugar/fine sugar

* 15g low fat milk and 5g evaporated milk can be replaced by 20g whole milk.

Directions

1. Line a 6x3" round cake pan with parchment paper at the base. Set aside.

2. Mix low fat milk, evaporated milk, and golden syrup in a small cup. Set aside.

3. Loosen the top flour, milk powder and baking powder, with a small whisk.

Heat 35g of coconut oil in a heat resistant bowl till you see convection waves appear at the base of the oil. 

Remove the bowl of warm oil from the heat source, and fold in the loosened flours from above, into a smooth paste.

Mash the banana and add to the above cooked dough.

Mix in the milk mixture from Step 2 to the paste.

Mix in the yolks, one at a time, to the paste into a smooth batter.

4. In a dry and oil-free big mixing bowl, beat egg whites till foamy before adding salt, and gradually adding the  sugar mixture. Mix the fine sugar and dark brown sugar with a small whisk before use.

Beat the mixture at high speed and gradually slow down, till the meringue reaches firm peak stage. To test, invert the mixing bowl, the finished meringue should stick to the bowl well.

5. Take about 1/4 of the meringue to mix with the banana batter at Step 3, into a smooth batter.

Pour back the banana batter to mix with the remaining meringue, into a smooth batter.

6. Pour the batter to the prepared cake pan from Step 1. Bang the cake pan to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.

7. Place the cake pan in a 20 cm square pan lined with a iron grid at the base, and added with a 1-cm deep of hot water.

Preheated oven to 170℃ switching on only the upper heating element, bake at lower rack at 170℃ for 40 minutes. Reduce temperature to 150℃ switching on both upper and lower heating coils, and bake for 20 minutes.

You can bake the cake at 160℃ with both the upper and lower heating coils for 60 minutes, or till cooked through. But there's a possibility the cake may crack during baking 😉

8. Remove the cake pan from the water bath, and drop the cake with the pan onto a kitchen towel thrice. This is to prevent the cake from excessive shrinking during cooling down.

Let the cake cool down for about 25 minutes, or till the cake shrink away from the wall.

Loosen the cake slightly, and invert out onto a cooling rack.

You can dry the exterior of the cake using the remnant heat of the oven for about 15 minutes. This step is optional.

9. Let the cake cool down before slicing. Enjoy the light banana cake🍌😋