Sunday, September 1, 2013

Best Ever Banana Cake

Best Ever Banana Cake is a huge name to live up to, but this cake does just that.

It is ultra-moist and filled with the flavors of ripe bananas, nutty pecans, and tangy buttermilk. But it is definitely more cake-like than bread-like. Think Carrot Cake texture and density with bananas instead of carrots.


The recipe begins with, surprise, surprise, BANANAS. Sweet, ripe bananas. The smell of bananas is not subtle in this recipe. It is in-your-face screaming “Here I am.”


Mixing the batter is a little time consuming and messy. It took three bowls in all. One for the bananas, one for the dry, and one for the sugar/butter creaming. 


 And the recipe makes A LOT of batter. This one could easily be cut in half. I wanted to make cupcakes instead of one large cake, and I ended up with 24 cupcakes and 3 mini tube cakes. If I had had the room in my oven I would have 36 cupcakes, but the three trays just wouldn’t fit.  Mama wants a double oven for Christmas.


Here is a link to the "Best Ever Banana Cake" recipe on Food.com and the 1100+ reviews. Read a few pages of reviews before you bake the cake. Base on the reviews I did modify the recipe and reduced the sugar from 2-1/8 cups down to 1-3/4 cups. For me it had the perfect level of sweetness, but if you prefer a more bread-like taste you might want to reduce the amount of sugar even more.

I baked the cupcakes for 21 minutes at 325 degrees, and the moistness was perfect. Not too wet, not too dry. I also skipped the “freezer” step where you take the cake from the oven and pop it into the freezer for 45 minutes. None of the many reviewers thought this improved the cake to any great degree so I didn’t bother rearranging my freezer to accommodate all the pans.

It was my weeks to bring treats for the “Cake Club” at work, so I brought these as my offering. They were a huge hit. Everything was gone in 45 minutes and I got 5 requests for the recipe! 5! That is an all-time record.


This Best Ever Banana Cake sure does live up to its name.  Open wide...