"Best Ever Banana Cake"

Hello recipe room! So sorry I have neglected you of late but I do finally have a good recipe to post, a yummy Banana Cake I found on Recipezaar.com

This cake had a lot of reviews and opinions written up about it, (which is why I like recipezaar, you can research what everybody did to make it work.) After reading up on the techniques, this is how I made it. It's a little unique in that you bake it very low, for a cake, at 275º. This slow cooking allows a nice sort of carmelized brown crust to form on the cake. I also found that the recipe makes a pretty large bowl of batter. I poured mine into a bundt pan and had too much, so I spooned about a cup of it into a bread loaf pan. This pan of shallow batter of course baked much quicker, but also had a lighter, fluffier more cake-like texture than the bundt pan, which took an hour and 15 min to bake, and was more dense, like a loaf of banana bread would be. So my suggestion would be to bake this in two 8 or 9 in. pans if you have them, so the batter is only about 1 1/2 in. deep. (It raises a lot as it bakes.) A larger pan will take a long time to finally get baked in the middle at such a low temp. Or, you could just try baking it at the standard 350º, it might be that that works just fine! One more note- tastes best after it has sat in the fridge over night and the banana flavor has developed a little. Make it the night before before you want to serve it.

Of course, after you smother the thing in cream cheese frosting, it is total deliciousness and you and those nearby you will be so glad you made this wonderful banana cake! (Here is a pic. of it as I held it in my lap in the car on our way to Jenny' house.)

Recipe as follows:

Preheat oven to 275º

mix in a bowl:

3 bananas, mashed

2 tsp. lemon juice

mix dry ingredients:

3 c. flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

a little less than 1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

In your mixer cream together:

3/4 c. butter

2 c. sugar

beat in

3 large eggs, one at a time, then add

2 tsp. vanilla

Beat in

1 1/2 c. buttermilk

alternately with the dry ingredients

Stir in banana mixture. Pour into greased pans, bake 1 hr or until firm in the middle and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove from oven, cool 5 minutes, cover and place in freezer for 45 min. (This step supposedly makes a more moist cake, but to tell you the truth, I skipped it because it was late and didn't want to run this thing out to the garage freezer, and I went to bed instead.) I did stick it in the fridge after it cooled though.

Cream cheese frosting:

1/2 cup butter or margarine
8 oz cream cheese, softened.

Mix until smooth.

Slowly add 1 pound powdered sugar and 1 tsp vanilla.

One more note: If you are like me and never have buttermilk sitting around in your fridge, just take 1 1/2 c. milk, remove 2 Tbs. from it and replace that with white vinegar. Let it sit and curdle a minute, it will be thick like buttermilk and works fine as a replacement.