Spiced Banana Filling for cake

[gfron1]

I'm preparing a cake for a 60th Birthday party this weekend and they wanted a chocolate genoise cake filled with a "banana custard." I'm going to cover the whole thing in a bavaroise with chocolate tiles inlaid on the top (she's a tile artist). I haven't had any luck finding a banana filling recipe that had cinnamon or nutmeg or some other spice. "Exotic" is the request, so it can be unusual and challenging.

I've exhausted my cookbooks and recipe gullet...any thoughts?

[JeanneCake]

Do you have time to get any banana compound to add to your standard pastry cream recipe? Or add mashed banana with some allspice or dark rum if alcohol is ok to your pastry cream recipe. Sherry Yard has a recipe for "banana schmutz" in her baking book - I've never tried it, but it might be a good starting place for inspiration. Maida Heatter has a banana terrine recipe in her New(est) book of Great Desserts (it's the one without her photo on the cover, all her other books have her pictured with all the desserts). Now, if I could find my copies of these books, I could be more helpful.

Dorie Greenspan, in Paris Sweets, talks about a chocolate banana tart - sauteed sliced bananas (in butter on high heat - melt some butter and sugar first, then throw in the banana slices, until they are caramelized. Remove with slotted spoon, blot excess butter and layer into a prebaked tart shell, cover with ganache and use some for garnish). So maybe you could ask if you could substitute a truffle filling with these sauteed bananas and a little cinnamon (or candied ginger)?

[chiantiglace]

Stabilize a banana chibouste. You can bring out intense spice flavors with the syrup used for the italian meringue.

[ludja]

Freshly grated nutmeg and rum are both nicely complementary to banana.

I've seen an interesting recipe for a roasted banana sauce, but I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps it is worth exploring if roasted bananas add a distinctive flavor. I would think a gelatin-stabilized banana mousse with whipped cream might be very nice.

[sanrensho]

I like the idea of sauteing and caramelizing bananas with spices, then folding into pastry cream. Would add an extra textural element. Or else puree the caramelized bananas before adding into the pastry cream (maybe not as attractive looking).

[turkeybone]

One component of the Jean Georges' exotic dessert plate is roasted bananas with a curry powder'd whipped cream.. Id never had curry powder in a sweet application and it was really, really good.

It also might help eliminate that "sheet pan grey" that might come along with using bananas.

edit: So the next step (which was in my mind but not on 'paper') is to pastry cream it up with banana puree and curry powder (or spice x) and lighten/stabilize as you see fit. And if you want that caramelized banana flavor, just use caramel or dulce de leche to replace all or part of the sugar for the cream.

Edited April 20, 2006 by turkeybone (log)

[melonpan]

cardamom used somehow...?

[gfron1]

These are all fantastic suggestions. I'm going home at lunch to start baking and I'll be sure to post the final product for you over the weekend.

[gfron1]

Here's what I ended up with:

I called it the Daquoise Tropical

Its Pierre Herme's coconut daquoise topped with Mamster's coconut panna cotta, another layer of the daquoise, bananas carmelized with rum and brown sugar, and finished with a traditional meringue and a candided kumquat. I also did a second cake that I'll post when I have time in the What I had for dessert thread.

I went with the panna cotta idea because it was really warm last night and I needed to make sure it would hold up.

Thanks again to everyone for their help.

Edited April 22, 2006 by gfron1 (log)