I take pictures and taste delicious dishes and… get some kilos. I have a lot of bags with photo-equipment and I lose kilos. It is a balance :)

But when you’re flying by plane… Here comes the problem. Just 10 kg hand luggage is not enough… at all! So I’ve chosen for myself the optimal variant of equipment set “to go” (I’ll write a specal post about it). But everything happens.

When I was shooting the famous chef Luca Marinelli, my on-camera flash just braked… It just stopped work without any reason. The photos were too dark and low-quality, and the Michelin-starred chef was standing in front of me, waiting… I was trying to do at list anything with that damn flash, but… unfortunately, I couldn’t. And then I told Luca, that we would do one last shot and, if it wouldn’t work, we would go outside.

And what’s a miracle! The chef made a funny face and the flash flushed for the last time and then rested in peace.
I said Luca that we can continue outside, but he loved this final shot so much, that he refused my offer and said that it was his best portrait ever!

For your project Luca choose the recpe of cake from his childhood. That unusual fruit cake was baked by his Mom. She taught her son not only to cook, but to enjoy the taste too.

Every ingridient of that dessert brings joy: cacao, chocolate mousse, caramel bananas and banana biscuit. And all together they give us a fabolous harmony of taste!

Banana Cake 2014 Recipe
 
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Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Italian Cuisine
Ingredients
  • Cocoa Sand;
  • Chocolate Mousse;
  • Cocoa Beans
  • Caramelized Bananas;
  • Banana Cake (served cut in cubes for this particular dessert)
  • Ice cream (Vanilla)
For the Cocoa Sand:
  • butter 115g
  • sugar 100g
  • flour 175g
  • cocoa 50g
For the Chocolate Mousse:
  • cream 450g
  • sugar 100g
  • egg yolk 75ml
  • 70% chocolate 80g
  • instant gelatin 12.5g (heated to approximately 85degrees)
For the Caramelized Bananas:
  • sugar 200g
  • water 100ml
  • butter 30g
  • ripe bananas
For the Banana Cake (served cut in cubes for this particular dessert):
  • flour 225g
  • brown sugar 175g
  • honey 100ml
  • butter 100g
  • 4 ripe bananas
  • 4 eggs
  • 60 almonds
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • Baking powder
Instructions
For the Cocoa Sand:
  1. Mix all together and bake for around 15 mins at 140 degrees
For the Chocolate Mousse:
  1. Mix all together, and melt chocolate gently in a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, then add instant gelatin until it’s becomes a thick mousse
For the Caramelized Bananas:
  1. Heat butter, add sugar then water in a saucepan until it become a caramel sauce take it off heat and finally add some banana slices to the sauce to caramelize it. Cool down.
For the Banana Cake (served cut in cubes for this particular dessert):
  1. Mix dry ingredients together than add wet ingredients, until well mixed then place in a baking tray and bake at 160 degrees for 40 minutes.

Don’t be afraid of the number of culinary operations that you need to do for cooking the cake recipe by Luca. It’s not so complicated as it seems. Fruit cake from bananas is so original and tasty, that it worth to spend time in kitchen!

Banana Cake 2014-2