Banana Cake Recipe

Did you know that you can freeze bananas? I had a couple of bananas a couple of months ago that were starting to get a little too ripe. I had read online that you could freeze them so I thought I'd give it a try. I was organizing my crazy freezer last night and found them. I decided to pull them out and do something with them.

Banana Bread...Banana Cake...Banana Muffins???

The kids voted for Banana Cake. I looked online for a recipe to use and most called for buttermilk, which I had none of. I thought I'd read in one of my cookbooks that there was a substitute for this...so I hunted online for that too. Did you know that if you don't have buttermilk you can make it yourself?? It said to put 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or vinegar) into a measuring cup and then fill it to the one cup line with regular milk. I needed 1 1/2 cups so I used 1 1/2 T. lemon juice and filled it to the 1 1/2 c. line with milk.

So I had my nasty looking bananas and my homemade buttermilk and did this:

Banana Cake
3/4 c. butter, softened
2 1/8 c. sugar
3 eggs
2 t. vanilla
3 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2 c. buttermilk
2 bananas

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Lightly spray 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar till light & fluffy. Beat in the eggs; stir in vanilla. Beat in flour, baking soda and salt; alternating with buttermilk. Rip the tops off of the bananas and pour (Yes, pour!) the bananas into the bowl. Mix into the batter. Be sure to get the bananas mixed in well. Pour into the dish and spread out evenly.

I ended up having to bake this for a total of 1 1/2 hours. I set the timer for 1 hour but then had to add 15 more minutes twice. You can check your cake by inserting a toothpick in the center and pulling it out...if it's clean this usually means your cake is done. I let this cool a bit, frosted it with a container of cream cheese frosting that I had on hand. I covered it and put in the fridge.

I thought this turned out pretty good. The cake reminded me of the taste of banana bread. My only complaint is that the frosting is SUPER sweet. I'm not one for really sweet frosting. I think this cake would probably also be pretty tasty with a milk chocolate frosting. Maybe something to try for next time??

Note: I'm not real particular in my baking--most recipes say to combine flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. I have never seen this to make much of a difference so I don't do it...why dirty another bowl when it's not necessary?? Also when making recipes that have bananas in them, they say to mash the bananas ahead of time...another thing I do not do. Why take the time to do it when I'm using a mixer and they are going to get mashed when I mix them in anyway...and again...why dirty another bowl?? This is what works for me. :)