• Cake
  • Non-stick cooking spray
  • 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 3/4 cups salted butter, softened
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • 3 large ripe bananas
  • 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
  • 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
  • Frosting
  • 1/2 cup salted butter, softened
  • 1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
  • 1 (8-ounce) package Neufchatel cheese
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2 cups powdered sugar

Our dear friends, The Forster’s, came over for dinner Saturday evening and I wanted to make something special for them. I knew Amanda loved my Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and Caesar Salad, so I made that for our meal. I also knew that she and her family were fond of peanut butter and banana, so I made this cake for dessert. I was so happy that everyone loved it.

A bowl of Chicken Sausage Gumbo and warm French bread equals comfort for everyone!

Moist and delicious, this Peanut Butter Banana Cake would have made Elvis proud!

 

Preheat your oven to 275 degrees. Spray a 3 x 13-inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a small bowl combine the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside for just a minute.

In a large bowl or mixer, cream together, butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, and then add vanilla extract.

In a small bowl mash the bananas with a fork and then add the 1/2 cup of peanut butter and mix together. Add to the cake batter and mix just until combined.

Beat in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk. Never over-mix your cake batter. I know you’ve heard that before. What exactly do we mean by that? let me explain…when liquids are added to flour and then stirred around, the protein (or gluten) in the flour will develop into a network that will hold together whatever you’re baking. Isn’t that great? This is what gives breads, cookies, cakes, and all other delicious bakes goods their structure. Although gluten provides many important qualities to baked goods, particularly breads, it can also make baked goods tough if there is too much of it in your dough/batter, so… excessive mixing of the dough/batter can develop the gluten to this point. That is why we always suggest not over-mixing your batter/dough.

Remember I served warm French bread with my Gumbo? Well, gluten also has an great absorbent quality, which is why bread is capable of soaking up broth. Because of this feature, gluten is often used by those on a vegetarian diet as an imitation meat. On the downside, gluten is believed to be partly responsible for causing bread to become stale.

Now that we’ve learned some interesting facts about gluten, back to our cake…

Pour the batter into your prepared cake pan and cook for 45 minutes.

Increase your oven temperature to 350 degrees F for another 15 minutes or until done. Check your cake’s doneness by inserting a wooden toothpick in the center. if it comes out clean, it’s done, If not check it every five minutes until the toothpick comes out clean.

Place in your freezer or your refrigerator for one hour.

Make the frosting in the same bowl you mashed the banana and mixed it in the peanut butter. Place 1 stick of softened butter, 1/3 cup peanut butter, vanilla and powdered sugar in the bowl and mix until combined. After one hour, remove the cake from the freezer or refrigerator and frost. Place the cake back in the refrigerator until ready to enjoy! Elvis would be proud!

It was a lovely evening, so after our dinner we headed out for a walk in our neighborhood. When we returned the kids (I still call them kids…) assembled a Gingerbread House I picked up at the grocery store earlier that morning.

Things started out just fine. Boys assembling and decorating one house and Amanda decorating the other.

then it happened…

They say a picture says a thousand words, so I’ll just let you “see” what happened…

Both our boys and Amanda began constructing unwanted “sun-rooms” in their roofs and then Amanda’s poor house collapsed. The boys house is till standing, but barely…it was fun just the same.