Having an abundance of milk, eggs and bananas this weekend, I decided to bake a cake and make some ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever baked a cake before (other than angel food cake, but there’s not much to that). I looked up a couple recipes and tried to tweak them them to my tastes, which is towards things that aren’t too sweet, no hard frosting, and a dense cake rather than light and fluffy.
For the cake I used this recipe from Joy of Baking (coffee instead of water) and skipped the ganache. I only used 1 cup of sugar. I baked for 40 minutes at 350f as directed but the inside was still not baked, so I did another 10 minutes at 400 and it set perfectly.
For the frosting I referred to this recipe from Taste of Home with the following changes:
- 3 cups of sugar instead of 4
- I didn’t have confectioners’ sugar, so I put 3 cups of granulated sugar and 3 teaspoons of corn starch in the food processor for a minute. Best I could do.
- 1 cup of mashed banana (about 1.5 large ripe bananas)
- Put it all in the blender until smooth
- Once the cake was cool, pour on top and let it drip down the sides
The result was a not-too-sweet, moist dense cake with strong but not overpowering banana flavor.