gastrobuddy: Recipe: Banana cake

I made this cake for Carla's birthday recently and served it with the banana rum ice cream - what can I say, in a house full of monkeys, bananas are a hot product. Its texture is closer to a poundcake than a sponge, and the flavour is great. I didn't want to chance overflowing the pan during the cook, so I peeled some off and cooked it in a 1/2 pan sized silpat and it on it's own has great potential - thin and even and workable. I could see it work as a roll cake or divide the batter up into sheets and do a multi layer cake. I gave it an Oreo base for fun and lightened a cream cheese icing with and Italian meringue using whites I had left over from making the ice cream. For decoration, I used chopped banana chips and simply made a thick strawberry coulis for writing on top. Again, if you don't have ripe bananas, slow roasted ones work well.

You will need:

For the base:

150g Oreo crumbs
56g melted butter

For the cake:

395g                  banana puree
30ml                  lime juice
350g                  cake flour
9g                      baking soda
1.5g kosher salt
170g                  unsalted butter, soft

450g                  sugar
3                        large eggs
30ml /2tsp         vanilla paste
350g / 1.5C       buttermilk

For the icing:

250g cream cheese
15ml / 1Tbs    sour cream
1/2 tsp    vanilla paste
2                       egg whites
100g                 sugar
100ml           water

Method:

- set the oven to 325F / 163C
- melt the butter for the base and mix with the Oreo crumbs
- spread the Oreo mix around the bottom of a springform pan and press down firmly with an upside down lid or other similar flat surface
- bake the base for about 8 minutes and let cool
- drop the oven to 250F / 121C and roast your bananas for 1/2 an hour (if you don't have ripe ones around)

- bring the oven back up to about 300F / 149C
- in a standup mixer, cream the butter and sugar til pale
- add the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl periodically
- add the vanilla paste
- puree the bananas with the lime juice and add in
- sift the cake flour, baking soda and salt together
- add in the buttermilk and dry mix alternately, starting with the wet and ending with the dry

- pour the batter into the pan, if your pan is a shallow one, be careful once you pass the 3/4 mark in case the cake rises too far
- place the cake on the middle rack of the oven and cook for about an hour, rotating occasionally - it's along time, but it helps the cake rise evenly - check that a skewer comes out clean at the end
- cool on a rack

For the icing:

- start cooking the sugar and water towards 250F / 121C (or a good rolling boil)
- get the whites whipping in the mixer
- when the whites are at a medium peak and the syrup is hot enough, drizzle the syrup into the meringue
- let the meringue keep whipping at a medium speed till cool
- set aside in a bowl covered with plastic wrap