by Sandra Merville Hart

I had a few bananas that I needed to use when someone mentioned their mother’s banana cake. My mom didn’t make banana cake but I found a recipe in The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Tip: This recipe calls for 2 cups of cake flour. If you don’t have any on hand, you can easily make it. For every cup of all-purpose flour, use 2 tablespoons less of flour in the recipe.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Prepare a 9 x 9 cake pan with cooking spray OR butter and lightly flour it. I cut parchment paper into 2 strips to provide handles for easier removal of the baked cake.

Mash 1 cup bananas (about 2 medium bananas) and set aside.

Sift 2 cups cake flour into a separate mixing bowl with 1 teaspoon baking soda and ½ teaspoon salt. Set aside.

Cream ¼ cup butter with a mixer. Slowly blend 1 ½ cups sugar into the butter until the mixture is light and blended.

Add the banana, 2 eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the sugar mixture. Beat well.

Add in the flour mixture a bit at a time, beating as you add until it’s all blended in well.

Fold in ½ cup sour milk OR sour cream gently until blended. (I chose sour cream.)

Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake 40 – 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool at least 5 minutes in the cake pan and then turn it out onto a rack. Allow the cake to cool and then cut it in half to make a two-layer cake. Fill it with Banana Cream Filling and ice it with Portsmouth Frosting.

The banana flavor comes out strongly in this delicious cake. The cake itself is good but when combined with the banana filling and creamy icing, it’s delicious. I even ate it for breakfast!

While neither the cake, filling, or icing took a long time to prepare—minutes for each one—baking the cake, allowing it to cool before creating two layers, and then adding the filling before frosting probably took 3 hours.

Enjoy!

Sources

Revised by Cunningham, Marion and Laber, Jeri. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, Alfred A Knopf Inc., 1983.