Banana Pudding Cake
Inspired by a blog post about banana pudding cupcakes, I had to translate the idea in to a cake!
I pieced together a few different recipes for this cake, since there wasn't really anything I liked that had all of the elements I wanted online. I started with a basic banana layer cake, pastry cream and a stabilized whipped cream frosting.
Banana Dream Cake, from The Novice Chef
Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter
2 1/8 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract [I added in a teaspoon of banana extract since my bananas weren't as overripe as I would have liked]
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
4 oz applesauce
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup mashed over ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
Directions:
directions:
Preheat oven to 275 degrees F (135 degrees C). Grease and flour 3 8-inch round cake pans. In a small bowl, mix mashed bananas with lemon juice, set aside. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, cream 3/4 cup butter and 2 1/8 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in 2 teaspoons vanilla, sour cream and applesauce. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk. Stir in banana mixture.
Divide batter (about 2 1/2 cup batter in each pan) into prepared pans. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove pans from oven and immediately place in freezer for 45 minutes. (This keeps the cake moist by immediately stopping the baking so the cake does not continue to bake when you remove it form the oven.) [I just always let my cakes cool to room temperature on flexible plastic cutting boards, then wrap them up for freezing since I generally don't put them together on the same day].
The cake is filled with a basic pastry cream and the cream is topped with sliced bananas. I just pulled the pastry cream recipe from the Joy of Cooking so I don't have one I've personally used to share with you. I'll simply direct you to Brown Eyed Baker, as her posts have helped me in the past and her Pastry Cream How-To page is extremely detailed!
I spread the first two layers with the pastry cream and topped with bananas, then covered the cake with a doubled amount of this Stabilized Whipped Cream. My grocery store was sold out of unflavored gelatin, so I turned to this recipe instead. I had some trouble at first, before I finally realized my pudding mix was pretty old. Not wanting to waste a giant bowl of almost whipped cream, I added a pinch of cornstarch and it all came together no problem.
Ingredients:
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon Jello Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix (dry)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar (or to taste)
Directions:
1. Put all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
2. Mix on low speed until ingredients are combined.
3. Mix on high speed until soft peaks form, scraping sides of bowl often.
4. Store tightly covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
Finally the cake was topped with simple piped whipped cream swirls (this was my first time piping anything ever, so pardon the unevenness), sliced bananas tossed in a bit of lemon juice to slow browning and of course, a Nilla Wafer on each swirl!
The cake has been a huge hit so far, and I was really pleased with how it came out! The only changes I might make next time are using a different pastry cream recipe (this was my first time ever making it, as well, so the texture wasn't quite perfect) and adding Nilla wafers between the pastry cream and sliced bananas on the cake, for that perfect soggy wafer taste of banana pudding :)