Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Semi-failure: Banana Cake

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I don't think I would describe myself as a particularly picky eater, but I AM when it comes to bananas. I like bananas best when they're still a little green--any hint of brown, and I won't eat it. I don't like the texture of bananas when they're fully ripe. However, since my Superhero Superpower is "forgetting things," sometimes I end up with a bunch of freckled, DEFINITELY too ripe bananas lounging around on the windowsill where I put them on Tuesday. Whoops! Fortunately, even if I don't like eating ripe bananas, these were just right for baking, and I do love me some banana bread--or, in this case, cake!

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I used Pichet Ong's recipe from The Sweet Spot (hey, my first ever actual blog post was about the sweet potato doughnuts from the same book!) for banana cake. Of course, the actual recipe uses baby bananas, and I used regular ones. I can't decide if this substitution was the cause of my not-quite-successful cake, or if there was maybe a bit too much baking soda in the recipe, or if maybe I should not have used a round pan (the recipe calls for a loaf pan). The unbaked batter was nice and fluffy and smelled lovely, though!

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Aaaand, this is what it looked like about 5 minutes out of the oven. Immediately out of the oven, it was well risen and springy (and smelled fantastic), but it started collapsing almost right away. And despite the clean toothpick that I pulled out of it, it felt wobbly, almost like it wasn't baked all the way through. I let it cool and cut into it, and while it is not the prettiest cake I've ever made, it is a pretty tasty one. It's lighter and fluffier than banana bread, but not as light as some other banana cakes I've tried. I'm going to give this one another try, so no recipe for the time being.

For those of you who are celebrating, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving! And for those of you who aren't, happy Thursday! I'm sure there will be lots of photos to come (we are deep-frying a turkey again this year, woohoo).

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