Plagiarism

In the midst of properly planning for the upcoming trip of my visiting family, I had tonnes of things to do. While things in regards to itinerary were fully in control, I spent the entire weekend cleaning up the house, and making sure that it would be presentable to my special guests. Apparently this is the least that I can do to welcome my family members, especially those few who are visiting Thailand for the very first time.



The good news is I managed to juggle with a couple of baking chores, including the December’s Daring Bakers Challenge. Lucky me, I had finised baking the challenge item yesterday and photographing it this morning. So I guess I am good to go for the trip which will start the end of this week. My family will be visiting this Friday, big big deal!

Meanwhile, I was visiting bloggers’ sites and came across plagiarism. I was once being warned about plagiarism when stumbled into Fitri of Rumah Manis’s post. She was furious about the fact that some of her photos were stolen. It happened a couple of times and it was her friends who happened to see her photos elsewhere and quickly informed her about this disrespect and irresponsible act.



Of course ever since Fitri has taken a tough measure such as displaying a warning “don’t steal the images” at the end of her posts. That was just the right thing to do. However, the irresponsible party who are decisive about utilizing her images without her consent, most probably might still be stealing. But she has done her best in protecting her blog photos (of course including the photo watermark). And if plagiarism still persists, whoever that steals has consciously claimed himself or herself a THIEF!



This morning, plagiarism again came knocking. This time it happened to Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen. The same, a friend accidentally saw it in a publication and decided to let her know. She was of course mad about it and put herself into full confrontation. The media was contacted, the editor was spoken to, and the conclusion was that this supposingly property-right-aware entity admitted (believe it or not) that they took the photo and used it because it just came out on Google search engine. How ridiculous could that be!



Lucky for Aparna, after her persistent fight, she got what she fought for: the publication printed the retraction on the following issue and paid all the damages (inspite initially claimed they didn’t have any budget for it)! Bravo to Aparna and everyone of us, food bloggers who have taken the stand to fight for what is right. Cheers! Read all about it here!

CHOCOLATE BANANA CAKE WITH BANANA CREAM AND GOOSEBERRIES
Makes one 7.5 inch cake



1.Chocolate Banana Cake
Prepare one 7.5 inch cake mould

Ingredients:
- Cocoa powder > 6 g
- Cooking oil > 1 tsp
- Evaporated milk > 63 g
- Lime juice > ½ tbsp
- Cake flour > 125 g
- Baking powder> 2g
- Baking soda> 4g
- Salt > ½ tsp
- Granulated sugar > 135 g
- Butter at room temperature > 90 g
- Ripe bananas > 100g
- Eggs > 2

Method:
- Grease and line a 7.5 inch cake mould. Set aside.
- Prepare cocoa paste by mixing cocoa powder with cooking oil and stir until smooth. Set aside.
- Combine milk and lime juice. Set aside.
- Preheat oven to 150 C.
- Combine cake flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Sift together.
- Fold flour mixture into a mixing bowl. Add butter and beat at low speed until crumbly.
- Add in bananas. Increase to highest speed and beat until smooth.
- Add in eggs, one at a time. Set the speed to the lowest, pour in cocoa paste and milk mixture and beat until smooth.
- Pour batter into the cake tin. Bake at 150 C for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and turn the cake onto wire rack. Remove the lining paper.



2. Banana Cream

Ingredients:
- Mashed bananas > 85 g
- Lime juice > 1 tsp
- Whipping cream > 385 g
- Egg yolks – beat moderately> 50 g
- Granulated sugar > 70 g
- Gelatine> 5 g
- Vanilla essence > ½ tsp
- Egg whites > 90 g
- Water > 2 tsp

Method:
- Combine mashed bananas, lime juice, and 85 g of whipping cream in a saucepan. Bring to boil.
- Set fire to medium heat and pour in egg yolks and 10 g of sugar. Heat and stir batter until it reaches 85C.
- Fold in gelatine and vanilla essence. Stir until gelatine dissolved. Set aside.
- Beat egg white until full of bubbles. Set aside.
- Heat 60 g of sugar with water at medium heat until sugar dissolved. Increase the heat and cook until syrup reaches 121 C.
- Gently pour hot syrup into the bubbly egg white mixture. Continue beating until soft peaks form.
- Combine this egg white mixture with banana mixture. Beat at slow speed until smooth. Set aside.
- Whip 300 g of whipping cream at highest speed for 2 minutes until firm peaks form. Set speed to low and add in 300g of banana egg white mixture. Continue whipping until smooth.



3. Chocolate Glaze

Ingredients:
- Whipping cream > 50g
- Dark chocolate – chop > 50 g

Method:
- Place chopped chocolate in heat-proof bowl.
- Heat whipping cream until boiled.
- Pour immediately into the chopped chocolate. Leave for 5 minutes and stir until chocolate is completely melted.
- Leave to cool.



4. Assembly

Ingredients:
- Chocolate banana cake above
- Banana cream above
- Chocolate glaze above
- Banana slices – cut into 5mm thickness > 4-5 big bananas
- Gooseberries > sufficient to decorate

Method:
- Slice chocolate banana cake into 3 equal layers.
- Apply half portion of chocolate glaze into the bottom cake layer, followed by a thin layer of banana cream.
- Arrange banana slices on top of the cream. Cover again with another thin layer of banana cream.
- Top with another cake layer. Repeat the above step.
- Cover the top with last cake layer. Coat the surface with banana cream.
- Decorate with more banana slices and gooseberries.