Banana Spice Cake

Women in clothes' stores can be related to men in electronics store which is the same as kids in toy store or candy store. Do you agree? You can equate this situation to 'me in a grocery store'. Oh how I love food shopping. It is not that I buy everything I see, but I have to glance at a lot of items in many isles before I get out of the store. I went to Redner's this week to get a bag of onions and some fruits. That's all. I had my kid with me and that was the reason to decide to get out as soon as I can. Boy was I wrong!!

I didn't know that they have sale on things that I use a lot. There were frozen vegetables for such low price, I ended up staying good amount of time buying lots of them. And then, even when I knew I don't have too much freezer space after stuffing all the frozen veggies, I bought the ripe blackened bananas that they were selling for cheap. Result? this banana cake. I warn you one thing though. Don't be surprised if you see too many banana recipes on this blog for a good two week duration. They have filled up a good amount of my freezer space. Yes, I bought about 10 pounds of bananas. God help me.

One year back - Apples to Applesauce to Applebutter
Two years back - Chinese style Vermicelli
Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 3 cups
Sugar - 2 1/2 cups
Very ripe banana - 4 (When you mash it, you should get 1 3/4 cup - 2 cups)
Eggs - 3 large
Baking Soda - 2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Canola oil - 1 cup (You could easily sub half of it with more banana puree or applesauce)
Powdered Cinnamon - 1 tsp
Powdered Cloves - 1/4 tsp
Nutmeg - 1/8 tsp

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 F (I did it at 325 F since I was using a dark pan). Grease and flour a 12 cup bundt pan or a tube pan. In a bowl, whisk together flour, spice powders, salt, baking soda. In another bowl, beat oil and sugar till combined. Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the oil and egg mixture and beat. Add half of the banana puree and continue to beat. Repeat 1/3 of flour, remaining half of banana and 1/3 of flour mixture beating to incorporate everything very well. Pour into the prepared pan. Tap the pan few times to remove air bubbles. Bake for 55 minutes to an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes and then turn it on to the wire rack to cool completely.

You could either pour a thin glaze or dust with confectioner's sugar and serve. You just need to make it and try this cake. Because this is one of the best cakes I have ever made and I have baked a lot of them.

Variations:
Instead of the spice cake, omit spice powders. Add 2 tsp vanilla to the batter and fold in a cup of chocolate chips to get Banana Chocolate Chip Cake. You could add about 1/2 cup of broken toasted walnuts too. For vegan version, use flax eggs by mixing 9 TBSP of warm water with 3 TBSP of milled flax seeds. It should come out perfect.

Enjoy.