So You Need To Use Up The Bananas You Have
I Don’t Care! Take Me To The Recipe!
Ingredients
Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup mashed bananas
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
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Banana pudding:
3 cups milk
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 egg yolks
2 teaspoons banana or vanilla extract
Banana frosting:
1 banana, smashed
1/2 cup whole milk
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
Alternate Topping Option:
Three bars of your favorite (plain) milk chocolate
2 cups of heavy whipping cream
Instructions:
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Banana cake:
Go ahead and preheat your oven to 300*F and gather up all of your ingredients. (Trust us, this makes it SO much easier, and you feel very TV-Star-Chef like. It's a good feeling.)
Grab three separate bowls all of the same size. In the first one, you're going to sift your flour with a fine sieve. This gets air into the flour as well as breaking up clumps, which is important for a cake like this. Once that's done, mix in your baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Grab a second bowl and toss in approximately two large bananas. If you'd like to measure them precisely, we advise using another bowl to mash them and then measuring one scoop at a time. Give them a thorough smashing with a fork, and then add in the buttermilk.
Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, cream together your butter and sugar until it's pale, fluffy, and fully incorporated. You will want to start off on low so you aren't inhaling sugar and slowly work your way up. Once you've got it nice and fluffy, add in your eggs and vanilla and continue to mix.
Next up is adding the dry ingredients and the banana a bit at a time. Alternate back and forth between them. until your dough is nice and thick, but it should also have a smooth consistency.
This is what the consistency and smoothness of your batter should look like by the end of things, although, we will point out, your bowl should be much more full than this. We forgot to grab a photo prior to filling up the muffin tins.
Now, a quick discussion of forms for the cake. You can use muffin tins, or an eclair pan, or you could do something crazy and use that Star Wars tin that you got for Christmas from the company White Elephant. BUT whatever you do, there's two things you need to make sure of. 1) Your form needs to be only 1/2 full when you make these. The batter will rise and you will end up with what looks like cookies on top of your cake otherwise. That turned out fine for us in our initial tests, but if you're wanting exactly what we offered, then you're going to need to make sure the tins are only 1/2 filled. (ask us how we know that one!
Once you've filled your cake forms of choice, pop them in the oven for 25 minutes, rotating your pan (or pans) halfway through the cooking time.
That /should/ be enough time BUT we advise checking with a fork or toothpick stuck in the center. If your testing implement comes out of the cake clean, great! You're done. If not, turn the pan, and leave it in there for another 2 minutes. Continue the process of testing and turning every 2 minutes until it /does/ out clean.
Once they're done, allow them to cool completely, and we'll move on to making pudding!
A preface for this section. Please, read all of the instructions carefully. Puddings are tricky beasts and they are just as easily destroyed as souffles. Our first attempt at making this ended up with cooked egg and grainy bits. Even after sieving the pudding could not be saved. You have been warned.
To start with, grab your six eggs and crack them into a pyrex bowl or measuring cup, preferably one that has room for more than just those six eggs. In a small saucepan, combine milk, sugar, cornstarch, and salt, mixing thoroughly. Cook over medium-high heat if you've got an electric stove, or medium low if you've got a gas stove. Do this until it thickens and bubbles begin to form on the surface. Reduce the heat to low and cook it for two more minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, and grab your ladle. Carefully pour one scoop at a time of the milk mixture into the eggs, using a whisk or fork to mix thoroughly. Go slowly, and add about 1/3 of the milk mixture to the eggs. MAKE SURE TO MIX THOROUGHLY and that you've brought the temperature of the eggs up to (roughly) the same temperature of the milk mixture. Once that's been reached, add the egg mixture into the pan and put that back on the heat, allowing it to come up to a gentle boil. Cook that for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. (and yes, we mean /constantly/. You don't have to whisk it so hard it flies out of the pot at you, but you do have to keep the mix turning constantly or else you'll end up with the bottom scorched.
NO, this is NOT what your pudding should look like. We’re including this image for the horror factor. Don’t let your pudding end up like, and carefully follow the steps we’ve outlined, please.
Remove the pan from the heat and add in your extract of choice. (We chose vanilla when we made it, to give some balance to the banana cake.) Pour your pudding into a clean heat proof dish and allow the pudding to come down to room temperature. Then pop it into the refrigerator to continue cooling completely.
For your frosting: If you're going with the banana option:
Grab a full banana, smash it up and then add it to a blender. Add in 1/2 cup of whole milk and blitz it until the mixture is fully liquid. Pour that mixture into your third bowl from earlier and whisk in the sugar one cup at a time.
If you're going with the chocolate topping: Grab a clean, completely dry saucepan, and pour in 1 cup of cream, reserving the other half. Put the heat on low and allow the cream to come up to heat slowly while you chop up your chocolate. You're looking for small pieces, so if you get slivers while you're chopping, that's perfectly fine.
Once you've got it all chopped up, add it to the cream, and bring your heat up to medium-low, stirring constantly. Just like before we don't want the cream to scorch. Once your chocolate has fully melted and you don't see anything solid any longer, that's when you need to make some choices. How thin you want your icing is going to decide how much of that second cup you need to add. If you want a ganache, keep it as is, don't bother adding any more. If you want to thin it out, add a little bit of the cream at a time, fully incorporating it until you are satisfied with how thick it is. Once the proper thickness has been reached, pull it from the heat and keep stirring until it's cooled down to room temperature.
So, has everything rested/cooled/set? Yes? Then it's time to put it all together!! :D Grab a large piping tip, and set up a bag with your pudding inside it. Now, grab one of your muffins and inject the pudding in the center if you have a muffin, or in 3 places if you have an eclair shape. Put it onto a plate or cooling rack on a cookie sheet, and do the same to all of the other cakes. Once that's done, it's time for your frosting of choice. Spoon that over the top of each cake and enjoy!
We know there were a lot of warnings and choices that you had to make for this week's recipe. We just wanted to make sure that you were able to learn from our (many) mistakes and ended up with a delicious food. If you /did/ end up with a delicious treat, consider showing us over on Facebook? If you ended up with a horrific mess, well you can show us that too!
If you're here because your stove threw a horrendous hissy fit during your attempt to make this (how /did/ you manage to get icing there?) that's ok!* You can give us a call at ((214) 599-0055) or set up an appointment with us on our contact page and we can help you fix it and get your home running smoothly again.
Additional Reading
A SWEET-TART CAKE TO BEAT ALL THE PIES
MONKEY BREAD, MONKEY BRAINS, PULL-APART BREAD, IT ALL TASTES GOOD!
SPOOKY & HAUNTED HALLOWEEN DESSERTS
SLOW AND EASY SUNDAY STUFFED FRENCH TOAST
*Appliance Rescue Service does not accept any blame for things that may have gone wrong during the process of making this recipe. We are not liable if you opt to not follow the warnings we give, or forget to follow safety measures.