Going bananas for: simple banana cake

Annalena believes that this is a situation most of you have experienced. You buy a big bunch of bananas at the beginning of the week for whatever reason: they're on sale. You plan to eat lots of cereal with bananas. In her case, Annalena bought them because her trainer warned her that with the new workout program, yogurt would come up as fast as it went down, and something ore solid, like a banana and peanut butter would be better.
So, Annalena needed two bananas and bought six. She also learned you can buy peanut butter in those wonderful little squeeze packages, and avoid the need to have a large jar at your desk, with a knife in it that you can sample during the day and convince yourself that it's a healthy snack.
You see what the Guyman has to deal with?

Ok, but for whatever reason you have them around, at some point, you have leftover bananas, getting nice and ripe and soft, and possibly attracting an errant fruit fly or 12. What do you do?

Well, when Annalena gives you overripe bananas, make banana cake. NOT banana bread, mind you, which is wonderful,but is a sorry excuse for piling lots of fattening things, like nuts, chocolate chips, oil, etc, into it, and saying it's healthy. For some reason, we all fall into the trap that things like banana bread, zucchini bread, etc, are good for us. Uh, no. Oddly enough, if you put the same ingredients together, and call it a CAKE, that phenomenon does not seem to happen (wonder why: for example, you would be MUCH more willing to fess up to eating banana bread, or a banana muffin for breakfast than you would a slice of banana cake. Compare the recipes sometime? HMMMM?)

So, ok, this is a dessert recipe, plain and simple, developed because Annalena things in the reverse way that is normal at times. See, normally, when someone is planning a cake for dessert, they make the cake, or choose the cake and then say "what ice cream goes with it?" Here, Annalena had the ice creams: nutella and peanut butter, first. "What cake goes with that?" Actually, she began with "what do you serve WITH those ice creams?" The Guyman wanted to know why anything else was necessary, which is a fair question. But Annalena tossed that question aside. Bananas seem the appropriate thing to go with chocolate and peanut butter, and Annalena was thinking pie. Banana cream pie, with ice cream, seemed a bit much. Bananas foster? Annalena plans to drink at this dinner, and does not want to leave the kitchen looking like Fafner (look it up). So cake was the way, and she turned to a recipe by her long gone and much missed cooking mentor, Richard Sax.

According to Richard (note that she uses the first person here. That's the level of familiarity she had with this man), when he ran his catering company, regardless of what else was on the menu, people wanted this dessert. Who can blame them? For reasons that all of us will understand, but probably not explain, banana desserts go to the "heart." They feel like "home.' Well, let's go home, and make some banana cake.

Very easy, this recipe. Here we go. You need to have a stick and a half of butter , unsalted, and left out to room temperature, together with three eggs. Large ones. You also need to mix together 2.5 cups of flour. Richard used cake flour, Annalena uses all purpose. Mix it together with 1.5 teaspoons of each of baking powder and baking soda, and one of salt. Also, 1.5 cups of white sugar. Annalena broke into her stash of vanilla sugar for this, and omitted the teaspoon of vanilla extract. To her taste, the vanilla sugar does not mask the banana, the way the extract does. Penultimately, you will need 1/4 cup of a "solid" dairy product: yogurt, sour cream, or, as Annalena used, creme fraiche (because that's what she had, and she didn't want to rip open a container of yogurt for 2 ounces of it).

Finally, the bananas. Richar called for a "generous 3/4 cup of mashed bananas, from two large ones.' Ok, here is where the practicalities of Annalena come to the fore. To her sensibilities, a "generous 3/4 cup" is a cup. The bananas need to be mashed. Annalena mashed hers in a food processor. She had four medium sized organic ones, and figured she would use the extra for something else.

She got 1.25 cups of mashed banana. No extra. This cake will taste strongly of bananas.

Cooking note: mash your bananas as close to bake time as possible. They brown if you let them sit.

Get out your mixer, and start creaming the butter until it's soft. Then add the sugar and keep on moving. It will look hopeless for a few minutes, but then it will incorporate and look lovely, as you then add the eggs, one at a time, and get a golden, soft, wet mess.

Turn off the mixer, and add half the flour. Turn it back on at LOW and incorporate it. Then add all of the bananas and repeat. Again, turn off the machine, add the rest of the flour, and incorporate, and finally, add the dairy.


Take the wrappers from the butter, and grease a 10 inch pan. This may be a tube pan, a fluted one, a standard baking pan, or even a spring form, if it's fairly leak free (none are completely leak free, but this is a solid batter). Get that into the oven, and bake it for 50/55/60 minutes. Test the center with a straw or a knife edge or something.

When the cake cools, if you like, you may frost it, hopefully with something you make at home. Annalena would be tempted to frost if she were not serving ice cream. With ice cream, however, just warm the cake a very little bit, and serve it forth.

Combinations? Well, yes. The cake can handle chips of some kind, nuts, raisins, craisins, dates, but not too many. Let your banana goddess express herself in this cake.

You should also keep in mind that, since you are working with a fruit puree, you could do this with anything you like that is pureed. Annalena is thinking passion fruit, or mango, or even pineapple in the future.

Sounds good, don't it?