Banana Cake
The banana mystery; you never seem to correctly anticipate your family banana consumption. It comes down to an unresolvable equation: never enough or too much. Do the kids only crave bananas when the supply is low? Their attraction to yellow spotless fruits makes your successful window of operations tighter. You’re on a time crunch. From hard green, to unripe, here comes the glorious yellow appealing mouthwatering “let’s have a banana” moment that vanishes less than 48 hours later at the appearance of the first brown dots. Yellow banana yes, giraffe bananas no! Is there such a thing as a family banana cycle?
What to do with overripe bananas? Of course you can make smoothies, banana pies, banana mousse, banana breads or like in my case, banana cake. Straight out of my mom’s notebook, Kiki’s original banana cake is a family favorite, my brother Karim favorite, birthday favorite, school favorite, party favorite, and save the banana favorite. A legend! ;) It’s a cake; fluffy and crumbly, and certainly lighter than the usual banana bread you would have at your neighborhood coffeeshop.
Bananas, walnuts, and cacao nibs make this cake happy, comforting, and not overly sweet. You can have more than one serving… that’s fabulous! ;)
Banana Cake
recipe credits: Rafaella Sargi
Serves 10 to 12 pers.
Ingredients for the cake pan
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1 Tablespoon all purpose flour
Ingredients
2 cups A/P Flour (300 g)
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup (113 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup Yogurt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cup mashed bananas (approximately 4 medium bananas)
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
2 Tablespoons sweetened cacao nibs
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar for “finishing touch”
Directions
You will need one stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, a strainer (or sifter), a medium bowl, a small bowl, a bundt cake pan (10 inch diameter and 5 inch deep // 25.4 cm diameter and 12.7 cm deep), and a wire rack.
Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
Prepare the cake pan: generously coat the cake pan with butter using a paper towel or a pastry brush. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour and shake the pan so the flour coats all the side and the really covers the form of the cake pan you are using. Flip the pan and discard any amount of flour that did not stick to the butter,… Your cake pan in ready. Set aside.
In a medium bow, sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and the sugar over medium speed until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the vanilla. Mix until homogenous.
In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the yogurt, then add it to the butter/egg mixture. Mix very well. Add the dry ingredients previously sifted: flour, salt and baking powder. Mix again on low speed, just until combined. Do not over mix.
Remove the bowl from the stand mixer. Using a silicone spatula, fold in the mashed bananas and cacao nibs. The batter should be homogenous. Try to avoid overmixing.
Put the cake batter in the prepared cake pan and bake in a hot oven for 1 hour (bundt cake).
Remove the cake from the oven. Let it sit for 5 minutes on the counter. Flip the cake on a wire rack and let it cool completely.
Once completely cool, use a small strainer to evenly sprinkle the cake with powdered sugar.
Enjoy!
Notes
The batter amount of this recipe is quite large, you can bake the cake in another pan (or in two regular rectangular loaf pans), but keep in mind that the cooking time will be different.
One scale recipe is enough for 24 cupcakes (fix the cooking time; check for doneness at 20 min mark and adjust accordingly).
Sometimes, I replace the walnuts with chocolate chips (1 cup). The kids absolutely adore the chocolate chip version.
