Even more bananas — this time it’s cake!
Dear Amy Drew,
I have never written to a newspaper or journalist before, but I had to today. I just read your column on what to do with leftover bananas, and I have the best recipe for using them, ever — and it uses up four bananas!
It is my grandmother’s recipe and initially only listed ingredients, since she assumed that everyone (at least in her family) knows how to bake, so the instructions are more like notes than specific directions. It is for banana cake and it is wonderful, especially when finished with cream cheese frosting.
I have pasted the recipe directly into this email so that you don’t have to worry about opening an attachment with a virus. (Yes, I worked in IT before I retired.)
— Jane
Grandma West’s banana cake, past and present
Jane McVicker’s first memory of this rustic, one-pan cake is watching her grandmother make it in the kitchen of their summer cottage in Ontario.
“She looked like Mrs. Claus in a gingham dress,” McVicker told me in the days after I’d made the recipe she so generously shared. “She was small, about five feet tall, and round, with cat’s-eye glasses and brown hair streaked with gray. She always let me lick the bowl when she made the cake — this was before everyone decided that was bad for you.”
I’m not condoning the practice, but I can’t resist interjecting. This batter, which seems half butter, half banana, is incredibly delicious. (Yes, I ate some.) And it must have been doubly so while baking with grandma.
McVicker, a Celebration resident, is often gifted bananas. She has two friends with trees.
“I’d been making the usual banana bread — and this cake — and when I saw your column, I thought you may not have seen a recipe for cake.”
She thought right. And a big ol’ sheet cake with icing — something simple, with natural bananas — is just my cup of tea.
The recipe was rough. And those large pans can be challenging — often the edges will overcook before the center sets. I enlisted a little input from Orlando pastry chef Michelle Hulbert, who helped me work it out, lowering the oven temperature from the suggested 350 degrees to 325.
“It’s always better to go low and longer,” she says. “But there’s no substitute for knowing your own oven.”
At the outset, I’d wanted to transform the cake into a bundt — they’re so pretty — and morph the cream cheese frosting into a glaze, but the volume on the below is a little large for a traditional. Solution: less two cups of batter and you’re good to go. Or you can make a bunch of minis!
“I also think this cake would lend itself perfectly to peanut butter frosting — with crumbled Nutter Butters on top!” Hulbert suggested. (This is the sort of brilliance I expect from the Maker of Sweet Things herself.)
McVicker is an avid baker, “but I’m not big on presentation. Flavor is everything. I don’t care how it looks.”
Recent binge-watching of “The Great British Baking Show” has had her focused on bread baking of late. Her focaccia is steadily improving.
“I have also made crispy croissants — they taste good but are by no means light — and my baguettes are getting pretty presentable!”
Baking is nothing if not practice.
I was never one for presentation
either, but this job has necessitated an upping of said game. As such, I adorned Grandma West’s banana cake with some walnuts — which also added a lovely crunch against all that soft cake and creamy frosting — along with a caramel drizzle. The flavors meld nicely and yes, the pics are better, too!
“Sometimes, [grandma] would make graham cracker sandwiches with the leftover icing,” McVicker recalls. “I always liked hanging around grandma when she baked, waiting for treats. Kind of like my cats do to me today!”
Many thanks, Jane!
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