Real Food Has Curves

Actually, this post is the first of a two-parter. The fully iced cake, up next. Right now, I'm all about the banana cake. Three layers, in fact. 

Here's the story: we spent a wonderful weekend with house guests, longtime friends from Dallas. In fact, this couple has made it to all three of my weddings. Two of them to Bruce! (Yes, I've married the same guy twice. What am I? Elizabeth Taylor?) Anyway, we had a dinner party on Saturday night with our house guests and two other couples. This week on the blog, I'm starting at the end and going backwards through the dishes.

Dessert first, naturally. You can't be married three times without learning a bit about the proper order of things.

OK, the banana cake. To start, a good banana cake requires good bananas. And I don't mean yellow ones that are hard and astringent. Blech. No, I mean properly browned bananas, a little soft, the worse for wear. Bruce buys them off what I call the "used fruit rack" at the supermarket. You know, the fruit that's beyond its prime, that's encased in plastic wrap and sold off for cheap.

He preheats the oven to 350F and lightly butters three 8-inch layer cake pans. That buttering thing is pretty easy if you use a bit of wax paper smeared with a dab of butter. You just have to get it down into the crevasse between the side and the bottom. Of course, you could also use nonstick spray--but not the kind with flour in the mix. You want a barrier between the batter and the hot pan--but not too much of a barrier. The layers' edges need to get nice and firm so the moist cake will hold together when stacked and iced.

And one note of honesty: we only have two 8-inch cake pans. Ah, yes, another kitchen-store purchase to be made. Anything to help the economy. But in the meantime, he improvised and used the two cake pans plus a traditional, 8-inch, non-springform cheesecake pan. (I believe you can see it to the side of the scales in a photograph below.) Necessity, mother, invention--you know the drill.

He then whisked 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons cake flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a mixing bowl. Why? The dry ingredients need to have even distribution so that a glob of baking powder or salt doesn't end up in one part of one layer.

He set aside the flour mixture and then beat 10 tablespoons (that is, 1 stick plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter and 1 cup granulated white sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed.

As you might remember from that coconut chocolate chip cookie recipe, the butter's temperature must be in the mid-60sF to capture enough air bubbles to make a light cake. He took the butter out of the fridge while he pulled everything else together, then cut it into small chunks and used the big-ass stand mixer to get it creamy and light with the sugar. Admittedly, because the butter is slightly chilled, it needs a little time to get nice and creamy, light and pale yellow, maybe 4 or 5 minutes. No stinting here. The mixture should be creamy although all the sugar may not have yet dissolved.

Then he beat in 3 large eggs one at a time, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and making sure each egg was fully incorporated before adding the next.

One note: the eggs were at room temperature, having been set out on the counter for about 15 minutes before he began. Again, cold eggs can shock batters, causing the fat (here, the butter) to chill down just lightly, losing some of that beaten-in air. No point in doing anything to keep a cake from being its best. (There's the basic rule: room-temperature protein, chilly fat. But it's really a tad more complicated than that.)

Now he beat in 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and 3 very ripe, large bananas. He just peeled the bananas and crumbled them up into dribs and drabs between his fingers as they fell into the bowl with the mixer running at medium speed. Since they were pretty soft, they got mushed up pretty quickly.

And now one warning: because of a complex chemical interaction between the bananas, the protein in the eggs, and the various fats, the batter will indeed break at this point. It looks nasty--but not to worry. It will again adhere into a creamy batter once the flour is added.

Which comes next. He turned off the beaters, added half the prepared flour mixture, and then beat at very low speed just until there were no traces of white flour.

He poured in 1/2 cup milk--he used non-fat, but you could use 1%, 2%, or even whole milk--and beat that until creamy. Then he scraped down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, added the remaining flour mixture, and beat just until incorporated, no more than a few turns at low speed. He turned off the beater, pulled it out, scraped any adhering batter back into the bowl, and then gave the whole thing a few turns with the spatula, just to make sure there was no unincorporated flour.

And that was that. He scraped the batter into the prepared cake pans, rapped them against the counter to remove any inadvertent air bubbles, popped the pans into the oven, and baked them until a toothpick inserted into the center of one came out clean, about 28 minutes.

OK, well not quite "that was that." He did weigh the cake pans as he added the batter. Very cheffy stuff, for sure--but it ensures that the layers are even. As you can see, his came out to 421 grams each. (That's the weight with the pan already set on the scales which were then zeroed out so the weight of the pan didn't factor into the weight of the batter. Whew.) A little more than I might do, but I can't argue with the results. I'd eyeball the whole thing and have one layer bigger than another, and maybe the thinner one a little overbaked. Ah, well. I'll give it to him: ease often thwarts success. 

Once out of the oven, he cooled them layers in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. He unmolded them by running a knife around their inside rims to loosen any stuck bits and then turning the layers upside down onto a plate one at a time, then back right side up onto the rack.

And to complete this layer cake: an old-fashioned, Southern miracle--aka Seven Minute Frosting. Check it out here.