Monday, July 25, 2011

Truly The Best Ever Banana Cake

Every so often, I go trolling through cookbooks and the internet for a good banana cake recipe. Yesterday, my nose led me to a bunch of bananas I thought I had found a good place for in the kitchen, and then promptly forgot about. Time to look for that elusive wet cake recipe involving bananas.
It was my lucky day. A baker named Rhonda posted this recipe I'm sharing with you, with a few adaptations of my own.




                                                         Banana Cake

2 cups mashed ripe bananas, doused with a half lemon

3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 cup salted butter

2 cups and 2 tablespoons sugar

3 large eggs, brought to room temperature in a small bowl of hot water for 5 minutes

2 teaspoons vanilla                                                                                                                                                                           1 1/2 cups milk, acidulated with apple cider vinegar, or buttermilk
  1. Heat oven to 275 ( yes, that low! do it, it works)
     2. Spray a 9 x 12 pan with Pam  

     3. I a medium bowl, whisk the flour and baking soda together

     4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till fluffy and add the eggs , one at a time , waiting for each to be fully incorporated, then add the vanilla. Alternate adding the sour milk and the flour mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Don't overmix.

    5. Stir in banana mixture and turn the batter into the pan. Bake about an hour, or when you touch the middle of the cake lightly with your fingers, it offers a little resistance.

   6. Now Rhonda says at this point to put it directly into the freezer for 45 minutes before frosting to up the moisture factor- I didn't because we were leaving for the dog park, and the result was still incredibly moist.

Now for frosting, you can do 1/2 cup butter, 8 ounces cream cheese, some lemon rind, vanilla, and 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar. Because I had an additional cup of banana puree, I put it in a pot with 1/2 cup of brown sugar and a tablespoon of corn syrup and cooked it down for about 15 minutes till it smelled like bananas foster. To the cream cheese mixture, I added that with just a bit of confectioners sugar to taste , and beat the hell out of it.
This cake will make you very very happy- and it keeps perfectly in the refrigerater.

9 comments:

  1. Hmm... 2 cups of ripe bananas and 2 cups of sugar? This is going to be really sweet, right? Well, my son already fell for it, he wants me to make it (it'll take me some calculation. Ounces??? Fahrenheit??? Let's see!)

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  2. This looks sooooo delicious! Thanks for posting! :)

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  3. 8oz of cheese would be packaged in a 250g. cups should be 250ml (a tiny bit less). 275f should end up at 135c.

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  4. Cecile if you make the cream cheese frosting with not too much sugar, it balances the sweetness out nicely. And the amounts really contribute to the moistness. Also, adding the lemon helps!

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  5. Thank you orb!!! And thanks Nana, and: Happy Birthday!!

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  6. sounds good Nana, I have a recipe for a banana nut cake/bread on my blog that has been handed down from my grandmother...has 3 large bananas and 2 cups of sugar, and no frosting. I'll give yours a try this weekend.

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  7. let me know how it does compared to your grandmother's !

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  8. Happy belated...and please bring samples of this with you to Las Vegas, I'll be asking for them! j/k lol

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  9. You were right, Nana. I made the cake last weekend and it was a very great success with my family! Sweeter than the cakes I usually bake (except "Kalter Hund", maybe) and somehow looking completely different than yours on the picture, but we all loved it!

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