Making a banana cake with a fish jello mold
April 9, 2024 10:35 AM   Subscribe

I'd like to make a banana shaped banana cake but don't have the time to follow the complicated tutorials I'm finding online. I have a copper jello mold that is fish shaped. I know you can't bake in the jello pan, but what if I baked banana cake, crumbled it up and mixed it with frosting a la a cake pop, and then packed that into the mold and covered the whole thing with yellow fondant. Would this be a passable hack? Any other ideas to impress my 2 year old with a banana themed cake?
posted by perrouno to Food & Drink (12 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Is there a reason you couldn't just carve a crescent shape out of a regular round cake? Seems straight forward and less work than the fish=banana workaround (which I'm sure would work fine and would impress a 2 year old!)
posted by LKWorking at 10:47 AM on April 9, 2024 [18 favorites]


I think that would work, but I think it would also be easier to bake in a round layer cake pan, cut the cake into 2 curved half-moon shapes, layer them together and then cover in fondant. Then you'd get that natural banana shape with much less work and a better texture.

If you have a big box craft store near you like Michaels, they will have canned edible airbrush paint, for green and brown details.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:47 AM on April 9, 2024 [6 favorites]


Best answer: How big does your cake need to be?

Would your child balk at having, like 3 bananas of varying size?

I personally would bake a round cake, let it cool, then cut a crescent off. You have one banana. Cut a smaller crescent into the remaining cake, now you have two bananas. There should be enough remaining cake left then to make one small banana, for three total bananas. Frost them independently, obviously.

That said, your method would probably work.
posted by phunniemee at 10:50 AM on April 9, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: With a round cake you could also carve off smaller crescents for the banana peels.
posted by trig at 10:50 AM on April 9, 2024


Wait, do you want to make one big banana or a bunch of bananas?

For a bunch of bananas I would make 2 round layers, cut the second one in curved slices, arrange them on top of the other layer, and then use frosting to refine the shape. You could also just make a layer cake and use a LOT of frosting with a big piping tip to pipe banana shapes onto it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:52 AM on April 9, 2024


The issue I see with your cake pop approach is that it won’t look very nice when cut/texture would be off for a typical cut “slice.” I would maybe slice in to cubes? I don’t see it working very well, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible
posted by raccoon409 at 11:03 AM on April 9, 2024


I would spend the $12 and get a banana mold off of Amazon.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2024


Best answer: I would bake a sheet cake and cut a banana shape out of it. You would then have a bunch of cake left over that could be made into banana cake pops.
posted by gideonfrog at 11:27 AM on April 9, 2024 [2 favorites]


molding rice crispy squares to intricate shapes is use a lot in cake decor tv shows. Could you make kind of shell of rice crispies to fill with your 'cake pop' mix? Then cover with fondant?
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 11:58 AM on April 9, 2024


Yes, there seems to be any number of banana shaped cake molds for larger cake and more cupcake sized cakes. That seems to be the easiest approach.
posted by brookeb at 2:39 PM on April 9, 2024 [1 favorite]


2 year old? I'd use regular frosting unless you like working with fondant or the taste of it. I second the ideas of buying a banana mold or forming one from a larger cake. It would look like this picture: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/448108231648083836/ (don't click on the link from that pinterest, looks suspicious)

For Easter, someone made essentially a no-bake cake pop in the shape of a large bunny butt and served it with graham crackers to "dip" in so it could be done but cake pops are about half frosting so that would be very sweet served in regular slices.
posted by RoadScholar at 4:59 PM on April 9, 2024


Response by poster: I like a lot of the suggestions here and think I'll go with making round layers and cutting shapes out or a large sheet pan and cutting the shape out. Much better than the cake pop issues I didn't think of (too much frosting and the bad interior appearance). I'm not in the US so Michael's or buying pans on Amazon aren't an option.
posted by perrouno at 5:49 AM on April 10, 2024


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