Cake For Breakfast

I woke up early this Saturday morning to bake banana bread.  I based this recipe from one I found in the LA Times a few weeks ago.  In that recipe, the banana bread had dates, poppy seeds, and whole wheat flour, but since I didn’t have any of those I decided to improvise.  I used cake flour instead of the whole wheat, left out the poppy seeds all together, and substituted dried figs for the dates.  I also added a pear to the banana mixture just for the heck of it.   As the banana bread was baking, I did some housecleaning, and by the time the almost 1 hour of baking time went by, I was both starving  and zonked out.  My reward for all my hard work was a luscious, moist slice of what I think is more of a cake than a bread.  It’s actually quite light (thanks to the cake flour), and all the flavors really do work together.   I think I’m going to re-name my creation the Banana-Fig-Pear Cake, aka BFPC!

BFP Cake

Total time: about 1.5 hours

Servings: 2 loaves

ingredients:

3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 sticks) butter, plus extra for greasing the pans

1 and 1/2 cups AP flour

1 and 1/2 cups cake flour

1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 and 1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup sugar

3/8 tsp salt

3 eggs

5 very ripe bananas, plus 1 fresh banana

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup yogurt (I used plain Fage yogurt)

3/4 cup coarsely chopped dried figs

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

directions:

1.  Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.  Grease 2 loaf pans with butter

2.  Using a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking pwdr and baking soda.  Set aside.

3.  In the bowl of a stand mixer, or a large bowl using a hand held mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy (approx. 5 minutes); add the eggs one at a time until incorporated.

4.  In a medium bowl, mash the very ripe bananas, then mash 1 ripe pear into the bananas.  With the mixer running, add the mashed fruit mixture and vanilla to the butter mixture until incorporated.  With the mixer at the lowest speed, add the dry flour ingredients just until incorporated.  Gently fold in the yogurt and figs. 

5.  Divide the batter between the two pans.  Slice the remaining banana and top the batter of each pan with the banana slices.

6.  Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean, about 50 minutes.  Check the pans periodically after 20-30 minutes to make sure the loaves do not darken too quickly; if this happens, cover the tops with aluminum foil and cont. to bake.

7.  Cool the pans on a cooling rack, then unmold the loaves.  Sift powdered sugar over the 2 loaves.