The Banana Cake I Ended Up Making
February 16, 2010
After reading dozens of banana bread and cake recipes, I decided to go back to the one I’ve been making since I was about twelve. It’s in my first book, Mmmmm. But inspired by all the recipes I’d read, I added a few extra ingredients.
3/4 cup dried California apricots, cut into small pieces
enough rum to cover them.
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup sour cream
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter a loaf pan. Put the apricots and rum into a small bowl and heat in microwave 1 minute. Cool while you mix the batter.
Whisk dry ingredients together.
Cream the butter with the sugars and add the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and then the bananas. Add half of the flour mixture and mix just until it becomes part of the batter. Add the sour cream, mix in, and then the rest of the flour mixture.
Pour into the loaf pan and bake 50 minutes to an hour. Let cool for 10 minutes before turning out on a rack to cool completely.
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2 Comments
Reading your new cookbook, a Christmas present, I just got to “anyone have a banana bread recipe that they love?” I’ve made your recipe from Mmm (page 55) for years and everyone says it’s the best banana bread they’ve ever eaten. I’ll confess to a couple of changes…substitute a cooking oil in the blender for the solid shortening and substitute almond, walnut or pecan meal for some of the flour (not an exact substitution, more of a “throw some in”). If you don’t have nut meal just throw toasted nuts into the blender and grind them pretty well along with the other blender ingredients. It comes out tasting almost as rich as a torte. Thank you for 50 years of the best banana bread!
PS my sister’s picture appears on page 46 with Buster’s Baked Beans. She gave me my copy which is falling apart. Happy holidays!
This bread tasted great but it took waaay longer than 50-60 min in my 9x5x3 loaf pan. Seemed like it should’ve been divided between 2 loaf pans. Also, it doesn’t say when to stir in the apricots. I stirred them in with the the sour cream.