Saturday Baking - Banana Cake

This weekend I decided to make a banana cake with banana icing. This is an old recipe so I'm not sure where it came from originally. My dad loves these cakes and it's been a few years since he had one so I think he was very happy when I took one over for breakfast today. Yes, we had banana cake for breakfast. And it was good. We did have other good breakfast foods too (Thanks Mom!)

This cake is supposed to be a layer cake. Since I didn't have the right pans to make a layer cake I just used a regular 9x13 pan and iced it as one layer. You could cut this in half and still make a layer cake though. (Mom gets the credit for realizing that).

This cake is definitely banana flavored. We all love it though. Even my daughter who was allowed to have some with her breakfast. It does count as a fruit, right?

Anyway, here's the recipe:

Banana Layer Cake

• 1 ½ C sugar
• ¾ C butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 ½ C flour
• ½ t baking powder
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 ¼ C ripe banana (force through ricer than measure)
• ¼ C milk
• 1 t baking soda
• ¼ t salt

Sift flour and baking powder 3 times and set aside. Cream butter, add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add beaten eggs and vanilla. Add milk to bananas and baking soda. Add banana mixture and flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture alternately, beginning with flour. Bake in oven about 375°F for 30 minutes.

Banana Icing

• 1/8 lb. Butter melted
• 1 banana through ricer
• 1 lb. 10X sugar
• ½ t vanilla

Beat all ingredients together until creamy. Ice cake once it is completely cool. Keep cake tightly covered to prevent browning of icing.

Notes: I don't have a potato ricer so I just mashed the bananas and that worked fine with this recipe. I also used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour and you could not tell. The bananas are the taste you notice in this cake. I also don't have a sifter so I just let my mixer mix the flour and baking powder for a bit.