Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and.. an extra recipe tossed in!

A long while back I posted Aunt Bea's banana cake.... Since getting engaged to my husband about a century ago, I made it into the INNER SANCTUM and got invited to the Eichas family reunion every summer. With so many grandchildren, only engaged couples got to bring a date to the picnic....

So when I was just shy of 19 (Yes, I know, I was a stinkin' BABY!!!!!) I got to go to my first reunion.

AWESOME!!!!!!

Such a great family, where's the "LOVE" button?????? But all that aside, this was my first experience with Aunt Bea's Banana Cake... It was love at first bite.

And for forty years, nothing compared, but now.... Oh, now....

I've found a better one. Aunt Bea wouldn't mind me saying that, she was Dave's godmother, and a great lady, and she would love this cake.

I found it by accident and my first attempt was KITCHEN SUCCESS  FAIL!!!!

Here's the original recipe as I found it on Allrecipes.com...

But I persisted last weekend when we were partying in Seekerville and on Facebook to celebrate my new contract with Waterbrook/Multnomah!!!! (Have I mentioned I have the best agent in the world, that I love her so much we could happy dance around central Washington together???)

And: SUCCESS. This cake is cleverly designed to stay "light" and very moist and you need to give it a little more time in the oven than the original recipe suggests, but I found that out the first time, so I'll pass my tips on to youse!

Preheat oven to 275° (Now I have a convection oven and I raised the temp 10 degrees to 285° and it worked better because the fan action allows the oven to actually be "below temperature" At a low temp like this, that didn't work as well!)

Mix together in small bowl and set aside:

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Mix Together in another small bowl and set aside:

3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Okay, here's where we start havin' some fun with the mixer!!!!

Cream together:

3/4 cup butter 

2 1/8 cups white sugar

When light and fluffy mix in:

3 Eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract 

Once butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla are delightfully creamed together, alternate adding the flour mix with 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Now I didn't have buttermilk so I used 1 cup regular milk and 1/2 cup whipping cream (heavy cream) and it worked great.

Once all the flour and buttermilk or pseudo-buttermilk has been added and blended in, add the bananas and stir.

Pour into greased and floured 13 x 9" pan.... I had enough for a thick cake in that pan and a loaf pan as well, more about the loaf pan later!!!!

Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.... Mine was about 1 hour, 20 minutes.... The loaf pan took about 1 hour...

HERE'S THE SECRET: WHEN YOU TAKE IT OUT OF THE OVEN PUT CAKE RIGHT INTO FREEZER!!!!

Chill in freezer for 45 minutes. This interrupts that "out of oven" finished baking time and the cake comes out delightfully moist, light and to die for texture....

So I'm going to play with this technique more often, see how it affects other cakes! What a novel idea!

We used a cream cheese frosting for the cake, but we decided we'd prefer the "whipped" icing Aunt Bea used on her cake.... We love cream cheese frosting, but for this the whipped icing is better. And Susan Gibson Snodgrass on facebook said she uses caramel frosting on her banana cake... I think that's a cool idea, must try it!!!

Here's the finished cake with the cream cheese frosting:

And here's the recipe for the whipped cream icing that Aunt Bea used on her banana cake... and that I think works better.  This is from the Waldorf Astoria and my original recipe called for Crisco instead of butter, but I like butter better!

Heat in saucepan:

1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour

Heat, stirring regularly, until mixture thickens like pudding.  Chill.

Whip together:

1 cup soft butter
1 cup granulated sugar (extra fine if you have it, but regular works)
1 teaspoon vanilla

When fluffy, add in pudding mix above and whip at high speed until frosting is light and fluffy. Spread on cake and serve chilled.

No pics here because I didn't make this, but I should have! And now I'm off to make tuna for supper because it's a mainstay these days... and that's okay, because quick sandwich suppers give me more writing time!!!

I love me some more writing time!!!!

Aunt Bea's Banana Cake

So I love family. And today while it's cold and snowy, I was thinking of all the cool family stuff I've learned to appreciate over the years.

Fights on Facebook, notwithstanding!!!!

Here is a gratuitous pic of my Yankee winter this week:

And here's one of my big maple tree. I love this tree, in a very Anne of Green Gables and the cherry tree kind of way:

So yes, back to family. I love the whole concept of family

My family, Dave's family, your family. I just love how weird and normal we all are and how we manage to function even though every sibling is different from generation to generation.

There's a reason God ORDERED us to love our brothers and sisters.

Well Aunt Bea is a great person and every year for the Eichas Family Reunion she'd make her famous banana cake. She's also my husband's Godmother and she's got gorgeous soft, blue eyes, heroine-type eyes, know what I mean???

And every year I would WAIT for that day to eat Aunt Bea's banana cake.  Now back in the day you wouldn't DARE nip into desserts first. It wasn't done.

Now?????

I'm older, wiser, and have learned the truth about "Eat Dessert First"!  As the aunts and uncles aged, my generation started making more and more of the main course foods. But Aunt Bea still made her banana cake.  One year she gave us the recipe.

OH. MY. GOSH. I was so stinkin' excited!!!!!  YAY!!!!!!  I could make Aunt Bea's banana cake! Happy days are here again!!!!!

Well, I blew it. STUPIDLY. Instead of reading the recipe and following it, I used regular flour. DUMB.  But I have seen the error of my ways. I had Dave buy a couple of boxes of SoftasSilk flour mix when Jan Drexler (LOVE YOU!!!) told me to get cake flour in the house.

So this week I had bananas and a hankering for Aunt Bea's cake and when I dug that old recipe up, I realized the mistake instantly....  I'd used regular flour.

This time I followed the recipe exactly (although I soured milk with lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon lemon juice in a measuring cup, then filled the cup to 2/3 full with milk and let it sit on the counter for 5 minutes... well, ten or so because I got talking.... :)

So here it is and I topped it with the whipped cream frosting recipe that Tex shared on Monday.... that was the frosting recipe Aunt Bea always used, too, although hers called for shortening instead of butter. I like the butter version better.

Naw, I won't make you work from that, but isn't it a hoot?

Aunt Bea's Banana Cake

2 1/4 Cup Softasilk flour
1 2/3 Cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup buttermilk
3 eggs
1 1/4 Cup mashed ripe bananas
2/3 Cup shortening

Put all into a big bowl.

Blend or beat for 3 full minutes.

You may have to look far and wide to find banana mashers as cute as mine. This is Brody (on left), 'Lijah and Meggie (on right) and they're mashing the bananas.

For no pay.

Child labor!!!!!  :)  Of the best and most wondrous kind, right?

 Bake in greased/floured 13 x 9" pan for 30 to 40 minutes.... Mine was about 34 minutes. The top browns more than traditional cake, but a normal cake test of a toothpick inserted into the  middle works well.

 Aunt Bea always said the secret to why hers was so good was that she pulled it out of the oven a couple of minutes early.... That may be true, but using the right FLOUR would have helped me years ago. In my lame defense, when I first got this card I didn't even know a thing called "Softasilk" existed, so my card has "soft silk" flour....  But that's no excuse for messing up a perfectly good recipe!!!

Here is the link to Mindy's version of the whipped cream frosting Aunt Bea always used:  (on some of your computers it's actually two days/posts below this one so you can scroll down)... "The Texan's Whipped Cream Frosting"