A Sunday afternoon, and bananas were the only thing we had to eat in the house — bananas past their prime.
This cake is technically called “Aravaipa Farms’ Morning Banana Cake,” from Carol Steele’s special farm in Winkelman, AZ.
This cake could also be called, “I hate the grocery store on Sunday cake.”
That’s up to you — either way, it is the best banana bread/cake I’ve ever come across and takes only 15 minutes to mix. (And if you wanted to add cream cheese icing, well, that’s just showing off.)
I wanted to show you a photo of the interior — moist, dense, rich with walnuts — but this cake is long gone.
Recipe: Aravaipa Farms Morning Banana Cake (slightly adapted)
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 10″ tube or bundt pan.
In a large bowl, mix well:
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
Add 2 large eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla
In a separate bowl, whisk or sift together: 2 1/3 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp salt.
Add flour mixture to banana mixture, then add 1 cup buttermilk, 1 cup melted butter.
Stir in 1 cup dried cranberries. 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 50-60 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean and the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Let cool, and invert cake onto plate.
(P.S.: This is what Aravaipa Farms looks like — there’s a bed and breakfast there, with a fantastic restaurant — and you just might want to spend Memorial Weekend driving down that way.)