« Banana Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting »
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 4:31PM 
After tackling the post Easter chaos in my refrigerator, I turned my attention to a bunch of very ripe bananas in my fruit basket. My first impulse was to make banana bread. But given that I was expecting company, I decided to be more adventurous and make a cake. And wow, what a cake I made.
I found this recipe on the Epicurious website. It was originally published in 1997 and hales from the now shuttered Gabrielle Restaurant in New Orleans.
I made the cake as directed, except I used 4 ripe bananas, not two. (They must have mighty big bananas in New Orleans.) This recipe makes two, perfectly level 8" layers. If you want three layers, I would recommend using 6" pans, or doubling the recipe.
I iced the cake with (my own recipe for) cream cheese frosting, and sprinkled chopped walnuts on top. The original recipe recommends placing slices of fresh banana in between the cake layers. I elected not to do this, as I assumed that the slices would quickly become brown and mushy. I wanted to solve a problem. Not create one.
My company subsequently cancelled, so I gave the cake to the staff in my building. They were very pleased, and I was relieved to have it out of the house. It would have been too hard to resist.
The recipe for the cake is here.
Reader Comments (3)
Hi AJ,
I'm getting ready to make this and saw your link in the epicurious post. I originally discovered the recipe in the Gourmet cookbook and in comparing it to the Joy of Cooking was continuing to look for other recipes to compare.
Did you use cake flour as listed? Wondering if its really necessary or if I can skate by with all purpose? Thanks!!
Lauren,
Yes, I used cake flour and would recommend it for this recipe. The cake is quite dense, and I think that all purpose flour would hamper rising. I would love to know what you end up doing.
Michelle
I'm going to use this recipe for a dinner party in a couple weeks. I was asked to bring a banana cake and this sounds really good. My aunt and mother used to put sliced bananas in between layers of their banana cakes so I plan to add them (wish I had their recipe). They may have brushed them with lemon juice to keep from browning...not sure. They used to put toothpicks between cake layers to keep them from sliding and when we were kids we always looked for a toothpick in our cake slice and were sort of disappointed if we didn't find one.
I'm off to look at the rest of your blog and your cream cheese frosting recipe.