bananas foster bundt cake

I made a bunch of cake for my birthday back at the end of January, and to my mind, the winner was the bananas foster pound cake – a banana bundt cake with rum in both the cake and the glaze. Since then, I’ve been working on maximizing the banana and the foster flavor in the cake. It mystified me when I made the cake for the first time, and continues to mystify me, that the original recipe uses white sugar. Every bananas foster recipe I’ve ever come across uses brown sugar, and I followed suit by switching out the white sugar for dark brown sugar. I fiddled with the amount of sugar as well, after finding the cake to be a bit too sweet as written; I tried 2 1/2 cups and 2 cups, settling on the latter because the cake retained its structural integrity while not being too sweet. This amount of sugar also dovetails well with the use of very ripe bananas, since they are sweeter than merely ripe bananas.

I also felt that three bananas didn’t provide quite enough banana flavor; the first time I made the cake, my bananas weren’t quite ready enough to into the batter – they were still just on the cusp of ripeness for eating. The second and third times I made the cake, I waited until the bananas were dark brown, nearly squishy, and the kitchen was perfumed with the smell of very ripe banana. (You want your bananas to be light brown when you peel them, but not translucently so.) The second time I made the cake, I felt that it was a tad too dense, so I cut back from five bananas and settled on four. The peeled bananas weighed 400 grams on the scale, so just make sure your green or yellow bananas weigh more than that when you get them from the store.

The worst thing that can happen to you, short of dropping a cake on the floor, is to have it refuse to come out of the pan. This cake….well, the first time, it did not go well. The cake stuck fast to the sides, even when I tried to invert it immediately after it came out of the oven. I left it there, upended over a plate, hoping that the cake would steam its way out of the pan. No luck! I stuck my icing spatula down the sides, not caring about scratching the pan as long as the damn cake came out. No luck yet again! When I finally stuck a skewer deep down along the grooves of the pan – and I mean every single groove – the cake finally, grudgingly, released. It looked ok coming out, but the glaze went a long way towards hiding some of the carnage.

The second time I made the cake, I made sure to bake it in my silicone bundt pan. But again, here I tell you why I generally eschew silicone unless making candy: they do not keep their shape as well as metal or glass pans do. The bundt pan looks great without anything in it; however, once you start adding a material with any density to it (ie, a batter), it begins to deform. Deform this cake did – it was flattened along the bottom, with additional indentations where the pan rested on the oven rack. If you really wanted to use a silicone pan, and you don’t mind that it gets a little flat on top, you could resolve this problem by putting the silicone pan on a baking sheet, and then popping the whole lot into the oven.

The third time I made the cake, I was determined to have it release properly. I took the pan when it was cold, got my butter to just soft enough to coat the pan, and buttered the pan thickly with about a millimeter-thick layer of butter. I followed the butter with a coating of flour, and then let the pan sit in the colder part of the kitchen while I made the batter. And this time, the cake released properly when I inverted it, immediately after coming out of the oven. some cake recipes tell you to wait an hour before inverting the cake; I usually eschew that direction unless the cake is particularly delicate and will somehow fall apart if you take it out of the pan too soon. (I do not know of a cake that does this.) I mean, if your cake has pulled away from the sides of the pan, there is no better time to get it out of the pan than now – especially for pans that can’t be lined with parchment paper.

I’m also going to take a selfish moment to grouse, for the millionth time, that nobody was truly listening to me when they asked what I wanted from LMF when I graduated. Most people, I guess, ask for things that are new; I asked for the LMF bundt pan, which was a nice thick pan, enameled red on the outside, perfectly seasoned on the inside despite not having a nonstick coating. The perfect bundt pan! I was the only one using it; I thought nobody would miss it, and the house could give it to me. Unfortunately, someone thought that I was asking for the LMF bundt pan out of modesty, and got me a new one. They were not listening; I wanted the pan both because it was gloriously functional, but also because it was a tactile memory of the place I was leaving behind.  I think about that pan every now and then and hope someone is loving it as I did.

Anyway, here is the cake for you. It’s a slightly dense, but soft cake with a tender crumb – pretty close to a traditional pound cake.  You can make it with or without the glaze – I only made the glaze the first time.  The glaze is a boiled icing and is quite sweet, but delicious (that’s the rum).

Bananas Foster bundt cake

For the cake:
3 sticks butter
2c dark brown sugar
5 eggs
4 very ripe, dark brown bananas (400g when peeled), mashed
1/4c dark rum (I use Bacardi 8-year reserve)
3c flour
1t baking powder
1/2t salt

For the glaze:
1/2 stick butter
1/2c dark brown sugar
1/2t salt
1/3c heavy cream
2T dark rum
1c confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Generously butter a 12-cup bundt pan and dust with flour (tap out the excess – I usually do this into the sink).

2. In a large bowl, cream the butter, then add the sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy, about 5-7 minutes (this helps develop the structure of the cake and is a typical step in making pound cakes, which usually do not have any leavening). Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure the mixture is combined well after each one. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each egg.

3. Add the rum and beat until combined well (at this point the mixture will look a bit grainy). Beat in the banana – you can take the intermediate step of beating the mashed bananas with your hand mixer to get them more homogenous – until combined well.
4. Beat in the baking powder and salt. Add the flour and mix on low speed until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat just enough to make sure no streaks remain (sometimes it’s good to also scrape the bottom of the bowl when you have as much batter as this cake has, since there may be streaks on the bottom).

5. Scrape the batter into the pan (I dollop it in, then smooth with the spatula). Bake 50-60 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Invert the cake immediately onto a cake plate (or regular plate). Let cool. If you aren’t making the glaze and aren’t serving it immediately, cover the cake with plastic wrap so it doesn’t dry out.

6. If you are making the glaze, let the cake cool (otherwise the glaze melts and slides off the cake). Combine the butter, brown sugar, cream, rum, and salt in a regular saucepan (you know, about a half gallon in volume?). Stir to combine as the mixture melts, and bring it to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Let the mixture boil for a minute, then remove from heat (turn the stove off). Let the mixture cool for 5 minutes, then quickly whisk in the powdered sugar until smooth.

7. Pour the glaze over the cake immediately, while it’s still hot. Try to pour slowly for the best coverage – if you go back over glaze you’ve already poured, with more glaze, it will show. (Alternatively, you could go for a lot of drizzled glaze rather than one slow pour.) Leave the glaze to set (it solidifies) and then serve.
[serves 12; stays good for at least a week, wrapped well]