This banana walnut cake is a sweeter version of the beloved banana bread. By beating air into the batter with a mixer instead of making this by hand, you get a lovely cake texture that is moist and soft. It’s simply and amazing thing how air can take a bread into a cake consistency. It goes to show how simple changes can make a big impact on recipes and why it’s important to follow directions. Or then again, maybe not!
Sometimes, a disaster in the kitchen isn’t a bad thing. Instead, the mistakes turn into the creation of a whole new recipe. A lovely, tender, tasty recipe. For example, today I invented a banana cake trying to modify a recipe. Instead of mushy over-ripened bananas, I used fresh ones and Hudson flour as it’s always such a wonderfully light flour for cakes and soft rolls. I love their flour and wish our stores carried their bread and wheat flours.
What I ended up with was an amazing result. It was way too sweet and airy to be banana nut bread. No worries, we will call this a delicious banana walnut cake. If you want to ice it, try out some cream cheese frosting. Cream cheese goes beautifully with banana deserts in general.
Banana Walnut Cake
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Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups (375g) all-purpose flour
- 3 large (270g) mashed bananas
- 1 ½ cups (300g) sugar
- 1 cup (226g) butter
- 4 large (200g) eggs
- 1 ½ cups (170g) walnut pieces
- 2 ½ tsp (10g) baking powder
- 1 tsp (5mL) vanilla
- 1 tsp (5g) salt
- 1 tsp (2g) cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (180C.)
- Line with parchment or grease and flour one 9×13" baking dish (13×33 cm.)
- Toss walnuts in 2 tbs of the flour until well coated. Combine flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon and baking powder in a small bowl. Mash bananas with a fork in a separate bowl. Set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy in a large bowl. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until mixture is creamy. Beat in the vanilla. Add mashed bananas and flour mixture and beat on low speed for one minute. Fold in the nuts. Pour batter into baking dish.
- Bake 45 – 55 minutes or when a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Center should read between 200F (93C) and 210F (99C.)
- Let cake cool completely in pan on a wire rack before icing.
Hi the batter curdled after I added the third egg….is that any possible reason that the cake batter curdled so suddenly,I made sure that all the ingredients are room temperature and I add in the eggs one at a time but it still turned out curdled. I used dark brown sugar instead of of granulated sugar….could that be a factor that it curdled so suddenly?
It is not uncommon for this recipe to split when adding the eggs. This is because the moisture in every banana is slightly different due to the age, size and nature. It will still bake up very well. Just add the remaining ingredients like it never curdled and it will be fine. This is a very forgiving recipe and comes back together in the end. I’ve even put all the ingredients into a blender all at once in an hurry several times and it works out great.