Baking Adventure- Banana Cake

Today's cooking recipe comes from Martha Stewart's baking cook book. This is the second time I have made banana cake. Please note that all these pictures come from the second bake experiment.





This time I took my time and sifted the flower into the batter slowly batch by batch. I doubled the recipe for my mom, who asked me to make her a loaf when I borrowed some cook ware.

Here's what I learned:

Experiment #1


What started me on the path to making banana bread is that my husband, Adym wanted me to
make it for his friend, Brhon. He is an ex chief. And for the life of me can not understand why he doesn't like any kind of cheese frosting! So I made his with butter cream icing. On a side note: The recipe calls for an expensive cheese frosting. You don't have to use what the recipe calls for in a case like this. So I used a cream cheese frosting instead.

After tasting both versions, a cheese frosting is the best choice for banana cake. It really compliments the flavor of the banana. The buttercream is too strong of a taste for the cake.
To me, it seemed like all I could taste was butter and sweetness from the cake.

I followed Martha's recipe exactly. The bananas were so ripe I could really taste it in the batter. And when I got it out of the oven, It was excellent. Martha Stewart tells you to refridgerate your cake because of the cream cheese frosting. The cake got hard sitting in the fridge. So I had to pour a bit of milk on it and microwave it for 20- 30 seconds to regain it's moistness prior to serving.

I didn't throw away my cake scraps. (I leveled the cake and prepped it for frosting) I decide to leave it out in tupperware containers. That stayed good for a week. We ate it all.

I had left over bananas that were becoming too ripe so I froze them for the next run.

Experiment #2

This time I defrosted bananas under warm running water. Then under the running water rub the skins off and dispose of them. That was the best method I found to get the skin off.
What I did different this time was that I put the peeled bananas in a large plastic zip lock bag to mash them. This was much easier for me than mashing it in a bowl. If you have a meat tenderizer, this would be helpful in mashing the bananas.

The bananas I froze seemed to shrink in size so I don't recommend using this method.
Also, my bananas were not ripe enough this time. So I did not get the same flavor in my bread.
When I buy bananas at the grocery store they are really yellow with green at the ends. The recipe calls for really ripe bananas. So next time I will wait three days prior to making banana cake. Why? You may ask. Because the riper the bananas, the higher the sugar content which also changes the flavor of the banana.

I have made banana cake but not banana bread. I honestly don't know the difference yet.
But I don't like the nuts in banana bread so that's why I aim more twoards the cake.

If you are low on tupperware or don't want to give away your plastic containers, you can always wrap your goods like this. (see image below)

I first wrapped my cake in saran wrap. Then in parchment paper. A beautiful bow to top it off. I am sure my mom will be pleased. I'll let you know what she says in my next post. I know my dad, brother and his boys will eat it. But I think they don't dig bows like my mom and I do. :)