Recipe Box Project

I've always been pretty indifferent to bananas. I don't love the texture and the weird strings on the sides of the peel kind of freak me out. Plus, they make my mouth itch. Also, if you've ever seen a banana tree in winter, it'll do a pretty good job of convincing you never to eat a banana again. The trees get soggy, waterlogged, and brown, and the whole things just crumple like a paper bag in the rain. It's always freaked me out a little, and since they're a pretty easy fruit to avoid, I just kind of forget they exist most of the time.

Somehow, though, I've always adored banana bread. Not just any banana bread, but my mom's banana bread. My mom is a pretty good cook, and her pound cake is second to none, but it's her banana bread that I still dream about on sleepy mornings when I just want to linger over a cup of coffee with a warm slice of cinnamon-y bread. I don't know where my mom got her recipe, and last time I asked her for it she didn't remember where it was, but it's the best banana bread I've ever tasted. When I was growing up, there was always a bunch of black bananas stored in the door of our freezer, where my mom would keep them after they got too freckly to eat-- the perfect state for banana bread.

So when I found this recipe for banana cake (with carmel icing!) in the box, I had high hopes. The recipe is handwritten by Eleanor, so it stands to reason it would be good-- I mean, my mom had to get her excellent banana bread genes from somewhere, right? But I couldn't possibly have fathomed how good it would be. Now before you go thinking I've lost my marbles by choosing banana cake over chocolate cake-- hear me out.

The texture is definitely pretty weird until the dry ingredients are added, but fear not! This is normal.

This banana cake, unfrosted, would be an excellent (if decadent) breakfast, topped with a dollop of yogurt and some sliced strawberries. But frosted with a thin layer of carmel icing, it's perfection as a dessert. The bananas make it incredibly moist without being or heavy, and because it's topped with a boiled icing instead of the usual buttercream, it's almost more like a cake donut than it's like a cake.

It's a versatile dessert that would be just as great for a wintry dinner party as it is for a summertime barbecue, and the carmel icing (which, by the way, has the texture of donut frosting) is easy to make and the perfect complement to the warm, slightly tropical banana flavour of the cake. Icing not your thing? You could leave it out and serve the cake warm with a melty scoop of chocolate ice cream on it for that perfect Bluth Banana flavour, and no one would be sad at all.

Even Judson (who, somehow, hates cake) loved this one-- and his co-workers all but licked the platter when I sent half of it to work with him. (I had to get it out of the house or I was going to eat the entire thing in one sitting, and although I would have thoroughly enjoyed myself in doing so, I figured it was better to share the wealth. Those are, after all, the same coworkers who have put up with 4 of my dumb cheesecakes at this point. It's definitely better to keep them in good graces.)

I wish I could explain to you how good this cake will make your kitchen smell, but since I can't bottle that smell for you, you should really just make this cake yourself. Tonight. For dinner.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. This cake is the best cake, and nothing I could say about it will do it accurate justice. Go make one for yourself and you'll see.

The recipe:

Banana Cake with Carmel Icing

the directions:
cake:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Cream sugar and shortening.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Add mashed bananas and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and add alternately with sour milk and crushed pecans.
Pour into 2 small round cake pans, or one 8-inch round pan and bake for 20-30 minutes (for two small pans) or 30-45 minutes (for one large).
Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.

Icing:

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and stir until mixture starts to boil.
Allow to boil 1-1 ½ minutes, stirring constantly.
Let cool and beat thoroughly until fluffy and light.
Frost cake after cool and eat cake with relish.

the ingredients:
the cake:

1 ½ c sugar
1 c shortening or Stork
2 eggs
1 c bananas, mashed well and very ripe
2 1/3 c flour, sifted
½ tsp salt
1 tsp soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
¼ c sour milk (buttermilk would probably work, or fake your own by adding 1 tsp of lemon juice or vinegar to a ¼ cup measure and then filling the rest with milk)
½ c pecans, broken

the icing:

1 c brown sugar, firmly packed
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp shortening or Stork
¼ c milk

Growing up, my parents had a terrible blender from the 1970s that was olive green and had buttons specific to whatever you wanted to blend. Labels like 'drinks,' or 'soup' or whatever, but the speeds never seemed to vary and I never understood what you were meant to do if the thing you wanted to blend (an iphone, maybe?) wasn't on the list. Nevertheless, we wore that thing out making virgin pina coladas in the summer (still my favourite family recipe) and banana milks in the winter.

What's a banana milk, you ask? Well, I'll do my best to describe it to you, but I'll have to warn you that the inventor passed away years ago and never wrote down the recipe, so it's a bit of trial and error. A banana milk is basically very cold milk, a couple of speckly bananas (preferably frozen), a wee sprinkle of sugar, a lot of cinnamon and nutmeg, and... maybe nothing else? It's sort of like a smoothie crossed with a milkshake, but without any ice cream and, I'm pretty sure, without any ice. You can't dress up a banana milk, because it's the absolute epitome of perfection as it is. Banana milks are the single thing that converted me to (tentatively) liking bananas when I was very young. I used to beg my parents to make me a banana milk-- we even had glasses (horrible, ridged olive green things) that were especially perfect for drinking them, in the same way that flutes are perfect for champagne and old-fashioned glasses best for old-fashioneds.

Despite my partiality to banana milks, I've never been able to stomach the idea of banana shakes from a restaurant-- I always figure they'll arrive at the table dyed an unnatural yellow, flavoured unnaturally with candy-like sticky goo, and not nearly as good as the creamy simplicity of a banana milk.* But when I found this recipe in the box, on a Quik ad no less, I got excited. It might not be as authentic of a Hurm snack as a banana milk, but there's not a lot in the world that I wouldn't try with the addition of chocolate, and the banana shake I'm about to share with you is definitely a win.

I can imagine Eleanor saving this ad from the newspaper to make these shakes for her grandchildren-- me or my older cousins-- all of us beneficiaries of her enormous sweet tooth and willingness to share. I, especially, was extremely sensitive to ads with talking cartoon characters as a child and adored the Quik ads with that dumb brown bunny, so I know I would have loved these as a kid. However, you need not be a child to make this for yourself tonight. Indeed, you might even enjoy it more as an adult, because now it's legal for you to stir a wee shot of Bailey's into your shake and that is pretty much the only thing that I can think of that would make this entire thing better.

These shakes are simple and easy-- the perfect summer dessert on a hot night. The combo of banana and chocolate is the perfect summer pairing that will make you feel like you're on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Make them and sit on your porch to sip them while you watch a thunderstorm roll in, and know that I'm jealous from way over here in Scotland, where thunder is a once-a-year occurrence at best.

*Incidentally, this relates directly to the best travel tip I have ever received, and I will share that with you now: if you're ever travelling in Italy and trying to determine at a glance whether a gelato shop is worth it's salt or not, check the banana gelato. If it's creamy and yellow, you know they dye their gelato and probably don't make it on-site. If it's grey and grainy looking, they likely make it on-site with fresh bananas, and their gelato is much better for it.