Happy (belated) National Banana Bread Day! I hope you’ve all been celebrating appropriately. # 115: Banana Bundt Cake

I’m not sure there’s anything better than a slice of banana bread, fresh from the oven. It’s the ideal level of richness that makes it perfect for dessert, breakfast, or snack. I love jazzing it up with cinnamon, dark chocolate chunks or even chocolate frosting! Enter: banana bundt cake. Essentially a round banana bread with frosting on it. Yup, it’s as amazing as it sounds.

There truly weren’t many differences between a classic banana bread recipe and this cake.

• Cake flour instead of all purpose flour: cake flour has a lower protein content (7-8% vs. the 11-12% of all purpose) so it doesn’t allow for as much gluten creation and results in a softer, lighter crumb
• Shortening instead of butter: this is probably due to the fact that Melissa Gray (author of All Cakes Considered) was trying to recreate a cake from the 70s, when shortening was more in-vogue as a baking ingredient

Looks like the sand on a tropical beach. So ready for a warm vacation away from this chilly weather. My hands are so cold!

The batter was so light, it was almost like a pancake batter.

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Isn’t the pan adorable? It’s a hybrid between a bundt pan and a spring-form pan. I found it years ago in the distressed items section at Ikea. Score!

So incredibly pale. Nothing that a little oven time can’t fix!

Ta-daa! You can almost see the little heart indentations from the pan. Highly recommend the spring-form version of the bundt pan – it eliminates all the scariness of turning the cake out.

Are you feeling chilly? Cuz it’s frosting time! Just chocolate, butter and powdered sugar. Keepin’ it simple.

I was worried that the cake would be on the denser side, despite the cake flour, so I wanted a light and fluffy frosting to balance it out. I whipped in as much air as I could without it flying away!

Much floof, very pleased.

For fun, I piped it out using my fancy piping tips. The structural integrity of the frosting was minimal so it didn’t hold the shape well, but it’s really fun to use them anyway!

See? I spread them out into an even layer with an offset spatula. I flipped the cake upside down to get a flat surface, but you can always trim the top off to have a perfectly even cake on both sides. Then you get to munch on the trimmings, so that’s definitely the better option here!

Happy munching!

Cake recipe: All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray