I'm deviating from the usual baked goods I put up on my blog that are good for care package mailings as that's where most of my baking goes. I'm back to trying to replicate my favorite banana cake from
Icing on the Cake with recipe #17.
The reason for the change in pace is I'm also volunteering to bake for the local houseless population in my area. In the mutual aid group I belong to, I've discovered people who distribute food to them every week and I offered to make baked goods as part of that distribution. The first time I baked 5 different kinds of cookies (no pictures as they were recipes I'd already tried out and blogged about) and made maybe almost 100? I didn't count up everything.
I've made cookies and brownies before to be distributed to local people in need of food assistance and who probably rarely get homemade baked goods. This time around, I decided to mix up what they usually get and made cakes. This is one of them. I know from my experience doing food distributions for the food bank, before we switched to packaged bundles of food for mobile distribution (thanks to the pandemic) and the food bank clients could choose from certain categories of food, when it came to desserts the donated cakes from the local grocery stores were always popular. So I wanted to make cakes.
I've seen versions of this recipe around before and this one has been on my pinterest board for ages. It differs from the usual banana cake in how it's made. The two things that set it apart from the traditional bake, is first you bake the cake at a really low temperature (275 degrees vs the typical 350 degrees) then once you take the cake out of the oven, you immediately put it in the freezer for 45 minutes. That's meant to ensure the cake is moist.
It's a novel approach and it worked well in that this is a very moist cake. But most banana cakes are moist since the mashed banana adds so much moisture to the batter. This wasn't as fluffy as the Icing on the Cake banana cake but I already knew ahead of time it wouldn't be given the denseness of the texture, added by the freezer step. Still, the flavor was good. Just be warned that you do have to clear the space in your freezer and make sure the cake pan has plenty of room since you don't want your freezer items too close to the hot cake pan or they'll melt. In other words, keep your ice cream far, far away.
1 1/2 cups ripe bananas, mashed
2 teaspoons lemon juice
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 1/8 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
Frosting
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
- Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, combined mashed bananas with lemon juice; set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then stir in vanilla.
- Beat in flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, mixing until just combined after each addition. Stir in banana mixture.
- Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and place directly into the freezer for 45 minutes.
- Frosting: cream together butter and cream cheese until smooth and well combined. Beat in vanilla. Add confectioners' sugar, one cup at a time, and beat on low speed until combined then on high speed until frosting is smooth. Spread over cooled cake.
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