We Germans are not known to have a lot of humor but I think this cake actually is funny … and delicious! Mole Cake is a rather new recipe in Germany but I can’t tell who invented it. Roughly 25 years ago, it became available as a box cake and soon after it was a favorite at birthday parties.
Video: How to Bake a Mole Cake
Mole Cake – so unique!
You’ll never get rid of a mole mound this fast ever again!
The wonderful combination of a nice moist chocolate cake with cream and bananas is a culinary match made in heaven. The base is the baked chocolate cake but you have to dig in and carve it out a bit. Then you cover the bottom with bananas. On top of that, you create a mound with whipped cream. This is then covered with the cake crumbles from the carving. For a little extra, you can make a cute mole that sits on top of it all. Almost too pretty to eat but too good to resist!
Variations of this Recipe
Like always, there are different variations to make this. I stuck to what I believe is the original. It’s simple and easy to make. But some people don’t like bananas and opt for strawberries or cherries. That has of course a lot more color but I miss the sweeness of the bananas in that version. One would have to add a bit more sugar to the whipping cream without the bananas.
Talking about whipping cream: Some use a mix of Quark and Whipping Cream. That reduces the amount of fat in the recipe.
Recipe: How to make Quark.
A Twist For Halloween
While this cake is absolutely cute, you can easily turn it into a spooky Halloween Party Cake. Just use a rectangular baking pan, omit the mole and instead use decorated cookies as gravestones… there you have a creepy graveyard. But for the passionate golfer, the original mole cake will do for Halloween, too 😉.
Bananas – wash your hands?
I still watch German TV sometimes, mostly documentaries because they are really well-made and informative. A few weeks ago, I came across a documentary that was reverse following the path of bananas to Central & South America. The products were sold as “organic” and also as produced with fair labor conditions. As it turned out, the work conditions were absolutely not what they were supposed to be and even the organic bananas were heavily treated with pesticides that are considered to be toxic and are not permitted in Europe and many other countries of the world. Those pesticides are still on the fruits when we buy them so I think it’s not a bad idea to wash our hands after touching them. It will not wash off my feelings of guilt, though. Bananas are ridiculously cheap and I would be absolutely willing to pay more for the workers to be paid and treated fairly. A whole bunch of bananas costs less than 1 cucumber, it makes no sense.
Mole Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 125 g Butter soft
- 120 g Sugar
- 3 Eggs
- 150 g Flour
- 3 tbsp Cocoa Powder unsweetened
- 3 tsp Baking Powder
- 50 g Chocolate Sprinkles
- 5 Tbsp Milk
- 1 pinch Salt
For the Filling
- 4 Bananas
- 550 g Whipping Cream
- 3 packages Stabilizer
- 3 tsp Vanilla Sugar or a bit of Vanilla Extract
- 50 g Chocolate Sprinkles
For the Mole
- 50 g Marzipan
- some Pink Food Color
- some Brown Food Color
Instructions
Baking the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C and grease a 9 inch baking pan with butter or oil.
- Mix the 125 g Butter with the sugar 120 g Sugar until the sugar is almost dissolved.
- Mix in 3 Eggs, one at a time. Then slowly add the 5 Tbsp Milk.
- In a different bowl, mix the 150 g Flour,3 tbsp Cocoa Powder,3 tsp Baking Powder, and 1 pinch Salt.
- Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and stir in with the 50 g Chocolate Sprinkles.
- Bake for about 25 – 30 minutes, then let cool completely.
Filling the Cake
- Once the cake as completely cooled, take a spoon and carve it out, leaving about 1 cm / ½ inch of a rim and also enough cake on the bottom. Keep the carved out cake for later!
- Cut the 4 Bananas lengthwise in halves and cover the bottom of the cake with them. You might need only 3 bananas.
- In a large bowl, whipp the 550 g Whipping Cream, add the 3 packages Stabilizer once it starts to get firm, also the 3 tsp Vanilla Sugar.
- Once the whipping cream has a consistency that can be compared to skyr, use a spatular to mix in the 50 g Chocolate Sprinkles.
- Cover the bananas with the cream and create a mound. Use the carved-out cake crumbles to cover the mound.
Create a Mole
- Use about ⅔ of the 50 g Marzipan for the body. Dye it with some Brown Food Color.
- Dye the remaining marzipan with some Pink Food Color for the snout and the hands. Follow the video in the blog post or do your own creation.
Notes
- Vanilla Sugar
- Marzipan
- Whipping Cream Stabilizer: 50 g confectioners sugar + 1 g cornstarch. Use 1 tsp on 250 ml / 1 cup.
Baked this for the first time and it came out beautifully. The cake was soft and moist and had the exact amount of chocolate flavor I like. The cream filling with banana were delicious although I had to improvise with the stiffener (used lots of corn starch instead). Overall, this was a huge success and my colleagues at work approved of it as well!