DeVonn Makes Torched Banana Cake

Every cake has to be licked

before it goes out to the floor.

If you don't test it, how are you going to know it's good?

[light music]

Hey, I'm Devonn founder of Yardy World

an event and production company

that's all about making tropical inspired food.

Today, we're going to be doing a torched banana cake

which is one of my favorite recipes.

Over the past five to six months during quarantine

everyone leaned in really hard to the banana bread

which I love and understand

because it's really simple, easy to go to recipe.

But I think it's actually time that

we treat ourselves a little bit nicer,

elevate the palette, try something new.

We took the banana bread concept

and we made it kind of extra.

Something like the banana,

which is a really beautiful ingredient

once you break it down to its part.

You know once it gets overripe, it gets sweeter, right?

The sugars start to come out of it,

pair that with something like brown sugar,

caramel, or coconut milk,

those things really helped to enhance

and bring out flavors of the banana

and flavors of the cake that helped to take it

to somewhere that maybe you didn't think that it could go.

What we have here is five bananas that

we're going to split in half.

And depending on what size banana you get

you might want to just, you know,

budget for an extra one or two.

So I'm just gonna lay it down on its side,

on my cutting board and just go one by one.

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Then take the banana out of the peel.

Supposedly banana peels are also great

for cleaning your teeth,

I did read somewhere that if you take

a banana peel like this,

you can just rub them on your teeth, kind of like this.

And supposedly it's the same thing as brushing your teeth.

I don't know, I read that somewhere.

Do I have a banana on my face now?

I feel like I might.

So gonna come over to my stove, just get the pan hot.

This is the part where you're gonna

combine the butter with your brown sugar and salt.

To be honest, this is kind of like a pseudo caramel.

It's not like a full carmel.

This is like an easy alternative

to just having something that kind of feels

like a caramel at the bottom that isn't as many steps.

Grabbing my butter and my brown sugar,

it's already got a bit of salt in it

and I'm going to add that to my sauce pan.

I feel like it's actually really hard to mess this up.

Really what you want to do is just to make sure

that you don't overcook anything

and making sure that your placement is right

but the result is super special.

You feel like you're getting something

that feels a little bit more elevated

than your typical banana bread.

In the pan, you can hear it.

It's kind of like bubbling back at me.

It's getting excited just like you should be

if you're making this dessert recipe

and then I'm going to add my brown sugar

and my salt to that mix.

Just giving it a gentle stir.

This color of the butter will turn

from something like a tawny golden color

to something that's more like a copper penny.

It doesn't really come together all the way

but that's okay because during the baking process,

it'll kind of cook in the oven and even itself out.

Before I add the carmel, the pseudo carmel,

I'm going to just base the sides

and the bottom of the spring forms,

gonna help allow for the banana to actually

release from the bottom of the pan.

I'm going to take the carmel and I'm going to pour it

into the bottom of the pan with the butter.

I'm not going to fuss around with spreading it

around too much because it'll kind of naturally do that

once I put the bananas into the pan.

You wanna work from one side to the next side

when it comes to bananas so that whenever there are gaps

that happen you can then just cut a banana

into half or into quarters and fill in those gaps.

But you want to make sure

that most of the pan is pretty much covered by banana.

This actually creates a little barrier

so that when you pour the batter on top of it,

it'll find its own kind of routes and paths

and fill in the cracks and crevices where the banana isn't.

This is the part where I'm just going to take them

and halve them and this is like one of the only things

I'm type A about, the banana halves have to be facing

the same direction or I get really frustrated

at myself for not doing it.

And success, you've created your

banana dance floor essentially.

So now what I'm going to do is work on the batter.

For ingredients, we have all purpose flour,

almond meal, baking powder, we have white sugar,

make sure that our flours and the baking powder is sifted.

And you want to do that so that

you don't have any surprises that everything feels pretty

even when you're baking it.

So I went ahead and I sifted all of that already.

I find that almond meal is really cool

because it adds not only nuttiness and earthiness

to something that you're baking,

for me it's more so about a textural quality

that helps add to the complexity of the final dish.

And I'm going to set that aside.

In a large bowl I'm going to combine

all of the wet ingredients.

So we have our egg and egg yolk.

We have our olive oil, vanilla extract.

We have coconut milk

and granulated sugar,

growing up as a first generation Jamaican kid

you would find things like coconut milk and bay leaves

and different spices like that in pantries.

And it was pretty much a staple

and that's just because, you know,

those ingredients are super prolific in the islands.

It reminds me of home, it reminds me of cooking with my mom

reminds me of my dad's restaurant

and it is also just really delicious I must say.

You're not just getting fat from the olive oil

or the butter you're also getting sort of like complex fat

from the coconut which adds kind of like a really nice

complimentary nuttiness to what's happening with the almond.

Like so, I'm going to add my dry ingredients

into my wet ingredients.

[light music]

Make sure that it all just comes together.

Then to make sure that we take a rubber spatula

and that we scrape the sides down,

all of the powder that might get into the final product

that will cause like lumps and clumps,

you want to make sure you just fold that back

into the final batter so that it's all accounted for.

And this looks pretty good.

So the next part of this is just pouring this batter

over the banana that we created in our spring form pan.

I know that licking the bowl is not a good idea

but that is like maybe sometimes like the only gratification

that you get after you've like done something

in making banana cakes all day.

You just really want to like get in there,

but I won't do that this time

but I'm letting you know that I really want to.

And so I put a little sheet tray under my spring form

because you know, we you're working with the liquid

like butter or making a caramel

you want to make sure that it doesn't

get all over the place.

I'm going to give this a little tap on the counter

to release any of the air bubbles

that might be trapped inside.

Because I don't want necessarily like move

the banana around too much,

I'm just gonna give the whole tray a tap.

It's also good for relieving frustration.

That's a whole different video conversation.

We don't have to get into that right now.

Preheated my oven to 350 degrees,

gonna bake for around 35 to 45 minutes.

And it goes, and now we play the waiting game.

Anyone know any jokes.

So checking in on my cake, smells amazing.

The top is a really incredible golden brown color.

Take a little toothpick, if you have a cake tester,

you could also use a cake tester, in the center.

Keep in mind that you do have banana

at the very bottom of the cake.

So you might get a little flack of banana

and think that it's not done when actually it is.

Pretty much clean.

So I know that it's ready to cool on the countertop

and then move on to the next step.

Run an offset spatula along the edge of the pan

so that when you invert the pan,

it's easier for the cake itself to release.

I'm just gonna pick this all up together

and flip it upside down.

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Unlock it and lift.

I'm gonna use the feeling of the spring form pan bottom

as my guide for if it's time to actually pop it off.

And it's kind of like picking a lock a little bit.

So you want to make sure that you insert the offset spatula

and you're just gonna work your way around

kind of like a clock and make sure that all of the sort of

edges and surfaces are

not touching the pan.

If a little bit does come up from the pan,

it's okay 'cause we're just gonna cover it up

with sugar anyway and torch it

and everyone's going to be really impressed

that you had a torch in your kitchen anyways.

Oh my God, it looks really, looks good.

There's a little bit that did come up.

That's okay, it's not too late.

The next step could potentially be intimidating.

I actually feel like it's fun.

Maybe it's the pyromaniac in me, I don't know.

But essentially you get to torch this cake.

All you need is a little butane torch like this.

They also sell the bigger ones

or if you don't have a torch,

you could use your broiler

and get a similar effect to the top of the cake.

About a quarter cup of granulated sugar.

And I'm going to sprinkle an even layer over the cake.

And you want to make sure it's not brown sugar

'cause it just doesn't caramelize the same.

So you start with a super even base of sugar.

So the thing that you want to watch for

when you are torching the top of a cake

is that you're constantly moving the flame around

so that what you get isn't even coating.

[light music]

Do you know what?

I think that this is actually

not the right sugar.

Oh [bleep].

[laughs] It's not sugar.

One second.

So it's really important that we acknowledge

that everybody makes mistakes, first and foremost.

And that sometime when you think you're using

pure white granulated sugar,

you're actually using monk fruit sugar,

which I didn't even know it was a thing

until literally five minutes ago.

And in full disclosure, this is not my apartment.

But we have the granulated sugar, finally.

And we're gonna keep on with the torching job

because honestly that's all we're really here for.

This is totally salvageable.

My job is to salvage things.

[light music]

See, this is the color I was looking for.

It's gonna turn into a really gorgeous,

beautiful Abraham Lincoln penny copper

color on the top of the cake.

As I keep the molten sugar hot,

I'm going to add more on top of the cake

and just push it around with my torch

to spread the rest of that color that we're looking for.

And actually, you know what,

because of the monk sugar,

it seems like we have some marbling going on.

So remember how it's talking about being extra before,

this is just an addition to all of that.

Honestly, you know what?

I wouldn't take a mistake back.

It's happened, we're moving on, we're learning together.

What we're gonna do next is sprinkle on the salt.

It'll allow it to kind of create like a sticky kind

of tacky layer so that the salt doesn't just go rolling

off of the dessert that you just worked so hard to make.

And just make sure that

each section has enough.

[light music]

Cool, you know what?

I'm not mad about it.

Torched banana cake.

I feel very accomplished.

I've learned a lot.

This looks absolutely gorgeous.

Feels like a stain glass Catholic window.

You wanna let the actual sugar dry for long enough

because it's like when you go to a restaurant

and they give you creme brulee and you hit it

with the back of your spoon, it's the same effect.

Go in.

[light music]

Oh my God, it's so crusty.

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Obviously, the coconut base, almond base,

phenomenon which is the batter we baked,

then we have the banana, caramel

and then the top layer is the torched sugar

and the molten salt as well.

[light music]

I'm sorry, I'm just having a very personal moment.

It's very rich.

Like I said caramel, almost like butterscotch adjacent,

a little salty, you get that hard crack

of the torched sugar top,

but also creaminess from the actual banana.

Super well rounded with the almond and coconut flavor

that kind of balance each other out

and play off of each other.

For me, baking has always been kind of about magic.

It's like you put all these things together

and you wait 30 minutes, 20 minutes

and you come out with something that feels

like it's totally transformed.

Feels like every time you bake something

you're actually like revealing like a present to yourself.

My favorite cake, torch banana cake,

I think it's the future.

Definitely making magic.

I was like, monk fruit?

What's monk fruit?