Nathaniel's Birthday Part II: Roasted Banana and Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cake

 I just got back from a weekend trip for a friend's wedding, and now I come back with a flu. I guess it is the season and I always refuse to get a flu-shot because I am afraid that I will get sick from the shot. The weather has not been friendly either, it is still cold and pretty gloomy here in norcal, with some sunshine in the late afternoon. Fall is definitely setting in.

In the meantime, let me share Nathaniel's birthday cake part II that we celebrated together with Tobias' birthday. When I asked him what he wanted for his bday cake this year, he immediately shouted "ice cream cakes!". Nathan loves ice cream cakes, he requested an ice cream cake also on his birthday two years ago.

I've been wanting to experiment with flavor combination of ice creams. I have made several batches of ice cream this year (not all of them are in this blog), mostly fruity ice cream. Since his birthday always falls in the first day of Fall, I thought making a fall-flavor would be ideal, especially since he is in love with salted caramel after I introduced him to salted caramel frozen yogurt last year.

I decided to pair it with roasted banana ice cream, and I think banana and caramel are one of those classic flavor combination that just works perfectly. I used chocolate sponge as a base cake and also honeycomb crunch to get a crunchy texture. Unfortunately, the honeycomb melted, so there wasn't any crunch it all, but it didn't take away the flavors whatsoever. I ended up sprinkling the honeycomb on top of the leftover ice creams. I topped the ice cream cake with frozen chocolate mousse, to get a slightly bitter flavor combination of sweet, salty, and bitter.

Roasted Banana and Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cake Topped with Frozen Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate cake - use any recipe you like, I used sour cream chocolate cake from a website that I don't remember anymore

Roasted Banana Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop

3 medium-sized bananas
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed (original recipe require 1/3 cup of brown sugar)
1 Tbs. unsalted butter, cut in cubes
3/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup heavy cream (or substitute with whole milk)
1.5 tsp. lemon juice
a pinch of salt

• Preheat oven to 400 degree F
• Slice the bananas 1/2" thick and mix it with brown sugar in an ovenproof baking dish (I used 8" square pyrex pan)
• Scatter the cubed butter on top
• Roast the bananas for 40 minutes, turning once halfway until the bananas are browned and cooked through
• Let cool for a little bit
• Put the bananas with all of the accumulated juice, milk, heavy cream, lemon juice, and salt in a blender and puree until smooth
• Refrigerate overnight
• Churn in an ice cream maker

Note: The banana flavor is really strong. Add milk/cream if it is too sweet or too strong. Another alternative is not to add all of the roasted bananas at once

Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Adapted from here

4 egg yolks
20g sugar
250ml whole milk
250ml heavy cream
1/4 vanilla bean pods, seeds scraped
100g sugar
30g water
1/2 tsp. kosher salt (I used about 1 tsp. of Tahitian vanilla bean sea salt, it has bigger granules)

• Put yolks into a medium bowl.
• In a saucepan, bring cream, milk and vanilla beans and pod to a simmer, set aside. 
• In a larger saucepan, combine sugar and water to the consistency of wet sand and cook to a dark caramel by stirring constantly. 
• Very slowly pour cream mixture into caramel, being careful not to splatter. 
• Cook on low until all caramel is melted. 
• Temper the egg yolks by pouring about 1 cup of the hot cream mixture into the egg yolks, then whisking constantly. 
• Return yolks to pot of caramel cream and cook until it coats the back of a wooden spoon or to 84C)
• Strain and chill for at least 4 hours. 
• Churn according to ice cream maker's manufacturers directions.

Frozen Chocolate Mousse
60g milk chocolate (or mix 40g milk chocolate and 20g dark chocolate)
30g heavy cream
150g heavy cream, whipped

• Combine the chocolate and the 30g cream, and melt it either in microwave or a double-boiler
• Let cool
• Fold in the whipped cream

Note: If using all dark chocolate, add about 1 Tbs. of sugar in the whipped cream

To Assemble

• Assemble the cake in the order of (from bottom to top)
  chocolate cake - banana ice cream - chocolate cake - salted caramel ice cream - frozen chocolate mousse

Note:You will have some leftover of banana ice cream and salted caramel ice cream