Food & Swine

tanna’s banana cake

ISF2013

If any of you know me well, you probably know my sister and how close we are.  We’re best of buddies, partners in crime and best of all… she likes it when I bake for her.  Surprisingly, her favorite thing I make is one of the easiest EVER.  Also, it is suiting to her as we always called her “bananas” when she was little.  Tanna-Banana… yes, you get it.  I try to let some bananas get ripe and make this cake whenever I can for her because she was the first person (other than my folks) that I genuinely wanted to please.  She ranks right up there on the #1 sister list (she is my only sister) but I’m sure if I had 100 she’d still be my favorite.  She’s soft spoken, kind, focused and driven and most of all she is plain COOL. She can also take me down in a sweet game of H-O-R-S-E, no surprise.  I love her.

And I think she loves me too…

Cristen E9

Best buds.

Cristen G4

County Fair

Cristen F8

Still beating me in H-O-R-S-E.

Cristen G5

I hope you bake this cake for your sister, brother, mother, etc.  They’ll love it like she does I’m sure.

Here’s a step by step look at how easy this cake mixes up. (Full recipe at the end of post.)Preheat your oven before you start assembling ingredients… it comes together so fast you’ll be waiting on that oven to warm up a while unless you do it in advance.  Try this:
Turn on oven, fold one load of laundry, assemble ingredients, mix up batter, bake.

Let’s begin:

Tanna's Banana Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Gather your ingredients:

098

Put 11 TBSP softened butter and 1 1/2 C granulated sugar into a large mixing bowl.

099

Press butter around with sugar until combined then whisk until fluffy.

100

Add 2 eggs, whisk well.

101

Add 2tsp vanilla (I’m using vanilla bean paste… surprise!)

102

Now squeeze those RIPE bananas in (3 of them)

103

Add 1/3 C ricotta cheese (you can sub the ricotta and milk here for some regular old sour cream 1/2 C)

104

Add milk (2 TBSP) and yes, I’m terrible about ‘eyeballing’ the measurements.  I just hate cleaning a million utensils for such an easy recipe!  Once all of these wet ingredients are in, mix well.

106

Add flour (2 C all-purpose):

107

Then 2 tsp baking powder.

109

Then 1/4 tsp of salt.

110

And whisk until well incorporated. (The photo below is NOT a final shot of the batter… keep whisking!)

111

Add 2/3 C mini chocolate chips (yes, mini… they are just better!)

113

Enthusiastically fold them into the batter…

115

Grease your pan of choice.

112

Pour batter into the pan and get your turbinado sugar out for sprinkling onto the batter.

116

Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes (depending on pan size= bigger pan, thinner batter, less time:smaller pan, thicker batter, more time) (45 min 8×8 pan, 35 minutes 9×13 pan)

118

A great way to cheat and make sure your cake is baked throughout is to check it with your instant read thermometer!  (200 degrees)

121

Next, (no picture for this)  I made up a quick glaze of 3 C powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla bean paste and a few tablespoons of milk to cover this cake with.  Here’s the final product.  Tanna likes a traditional cream cheese frosting for her cake which I didn’t make today (someone stole my cream cheese) but will include a recipe for at the end of the post.

I couldn’t wait and sliced this warm… oh my!

BananaCake

Previous Post Next Post

5 Comments

  • Reply Shannon February 17, 2014 at 12:16 am

    Can’t wait to try this!

    • Reply mikeandcristen February 17, 2014 at 12:55 am

      I hope you like it! Thanks for reading along. :)

      • Reply Shannon March 13, 2014 at 1:05 am

        Making this right now! Smells divine!

        • Reply Cristen March 13, 2014 at 3:11 pm

          I wish there was a ‘super like’ button on here! So glad you’re making it!

    Leave a Reply