Banana Cake-Bars with Dark Chocolate Chips (Still Lovin' that Spelt Flour!)

Given that I've been cozying up to the delicate sweetness of spelt flour lately, I thought it was high time to post another recipe that makes use of it. (My maiden voyage with spelt can be found here, in case you're interested.) Though spelt flour is made from the whole grain, it bears only slight resemblance, in my opinion, to whole wheat flour in terms of flavor and texture. I think it may be the golden ticket for home bakers who aren't completely thrilled at the idea of sweets containing any whole grain flour, yet who want to begin incorporating healthier flours into at least a few of their baked goods. It works really well mixed in with unbleached white flour, and I figure that's the best jumping off point. Give it a whirl on a small scale before you fully commit.

Bite into one of these treats and, from the texture angle, you won't even be able to tell that they're not made entirely with white flour. In fact, these banana cake-bars are so cakey I really couldn't get away with calling them just banana bars. These guys are more like soft little cake slices. With fragile golden crumbs that tumble off here and there when you pick them up, they cry out for clean white napkins and big tumblers of ice cold milk. They'll do those ripe bananas proud.

About this recipe . . .

I adapted this from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains. This was the first whole grain baking book I ever really liked. I've baked from it many times, and most of the results have been surprisingly good. I've noticed that many of the older whole-grain baking cookbooks out there, from past decades, often include formulas for almost concrete-like breads, cookies, and cakes. I'm relieved we're finally seeing a lighter approach in volumes like this one, and in Good to the Grain, which has a whole chapter devoted to baking with spelt.

The original recipe called for semi-sweet chips but, honestly, I think that would have made them too sweet. Plus, I'm a maniac for dark chocolate so I used that instead. I also substituted canola oil for butter, I drastically reduced the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg and, as noted above, I used a mixture of white and spelt flour instead of using spelt alone.

My kids really liked these, which I must admit kind of surprised me. Nathan (the now-15-year old), who is always my willing guinea pig whenever I bake something new, adored them. I thought the boys would become uninterested the second they heard the word spelt come from my mouth, but it didn't phase them. In my house, that's a meaningful seal of approval.

Banana Cake-Bars 
with Dark Chocolate Chips (and Spelt Flour!)
(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Yield: Makes one 9" x 13" pan; 24 - 2" squares.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9" x 13" pan.
(Just fyi: I mixed this recipe entirely by hand. Gave my mixer the day off!) 


3/4 cup canola oil
1 and 1/4 cups light or dark brown sugar, packed (I used light.)
3 medium size bananas, very ripe, well mashed
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. coarse kosher salt
1 large pinch ground cinnamon
1 large pinch ground nutmeg
1 egg, large
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 cups dark chocolate, small chips or chopped bar chocolate (I used a combo of both.)


Stir the oil and the sugar together well in a large bowl. Beat in the bananas, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. Add in the egg, stirring vigorously. Stop to scrape the bowl with a spatula now and then.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and spices. Add to the liquid mixture and blend thoroughly. Pour the batter into the greased pan. Let the batter rest for 15 minutes (this direction allows the flour to absorb some of the moisture a thicken a bit). Sprinkle your chocolate evenly over the top. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean. Cool the finished bars in their pan on a rack. They're best when allowed to rest overnight, in the pan, covered. (They stay fresh for at least two days and I actually thought the flavor had improved the second day.)

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My Mom (the Conservative Baker) and Banana Sour-Cream Pound Cake . . .

My mom used to make a mean pound cake. She was a woman of conservative taste in most aspects of life, truth be told. This was true of her even when it came to cooking and baking. If she felt a recipe went too far afield, her tendency was always to steer clear. In the almost 46 years that I knew her, she rarely--if ever--made anything remotely exotic. What she did make, though, was usually pretty good and sometimes startingly so.

That's not to say she never experimented in the kitchen. Her experiments just didn't appear outwardly adventurous, nor were they necessarily models of house-wifely innovation. They never screamed "Hey, look at me!" (Come to think of it, she never screamed "Hey, look at me!" either.) She had little interest in rocking the culinary boat. You'd never find her poaching an eel or putting pine nuts and pomegranate seeds in the Thanksgiving stuffing, but she was supremely interested in modest conventional variations that could subtly improve upon a recipe that she already really liked.

I suppose when it comes to baking, an attitude like that has far more drawbacks than benefits. The one obvious benefit such an attitude might hold, though, would be the fact that it gives you a chance to try and perfect a given recipe through repetition. Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it? I agree that it does. But, I suppose if you're a careful observer of the minutiae of each recipe as you bake, and you care about what you're doing, then a tried and true recipe can seem a bit different every single time you prepare it.

I think that's how my mom looked at this kind of thing. She was always trying to see what could be fixed, and trying to come up with ways to not just fix it but to make it better, both in the kitchen and in life. She was often successful that way in the kitchen; outside of the kitchen, however, one just doesn't have all that much control. As she aged, she became more accepting of the things she couldn't change, both large and small, and more appreciative of anything that was truly good . . . in the kitchen and in life.

About the banana sour-cream pound cake . . .

A simple, classic, vanilla flavored, non-boat-rocking, sour-cream pound cake was one of her specialities (for that recipe of hers, click here). The focus of this post, however, is a banana variation of that cake, one that my mother endorsed. It's a nice change from the basic vanilla, but a comfortable change.

I say kugelhopf, you say gugelhopf . . .

I bought a new kugelhopf/gugelhopf pan that I found on sale recently, so I decided to throw caution to the wind this afternoon and bake the cake in that. It's taller, and the bottom of it is narrower, than a typical bundt pan or regular tube pan would be. I don't know if I'd bake this particular recipe in that pan again. The outside of the cake got a little darker than I think it should be, but it is a pretty shape. I've made this recipe before in a regular bundt pan and it's turned out great; I'll probably go back to doing that next time.

This is one of those cakes that tastes much better completely cooled than when it's still even lukewarm, and also tastes best the next day. I dusted mine with confectioner's sugar, but in the past I've drizzled it with a vanilla glaze, and I think I gave it a chocolate glaze once too--all delicious options.

This particular recipe is a slight variation on one that appeared in Taste of Home magazine about five years ago (the original 2004 recipe can be found if you click on the link). In terms of what I altered: I changed the extract amounts and the salt amount slightly; I used superfine sugar instead of granulated (but feel free to use granulated if you want to); I used cake flour instead of All Purpose; and I didn't use a tablespoon of sugar to "dust" the greased pan. Other than that I left things pretty much the same.

Banana Sour-Cream Pound Cake

(For a printable copy of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease, or use baking spray on, a 10-cup bundt or tube pan.

3 cups superfine sugar (granulated sugar will work too)
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
6 large eggs
1 cup well-mashed ripe banana
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. lemon extract
1/8 tsp. almond extract
1/4 tsp. salt
3 cups cake flour (All Purpose flour is okay if you don't have cake, but sift it well before measuring)
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 cup sour cream

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 5 minutes or more. (Today, mine just never got what I'd call light and fluffy); the ratio of sugar to butter is pretty high. Just do the best you can, but don't fret about it.)

Add the eggs in one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stop and scrape the bowl as needed between additions. On lowest speed, stir in the mashed bananas and the extracts. Continuing on lowest speed, add in the flour mixture and the sour cream alternately. Begin and end with the flour. Stop to scrape down the bowl and the paddle as needed.

Spoon the batter into the pan and smooth out the top with your spatula. Bake the cake for at least 65 minutes and even up to 85 (my oven is like a blast furnace; my cake had to come out on the early side). The top should be golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the cake should come out clean. If the top is browning too quickly, cover it lightly with foil. When you deem the cake done, let it cool for about 10 to 15 minutes before you invert it onto a cooling rack.

P.S. It can be hard to tell when a pound cake is truly done. I'm notorious for taking them out too soon. That fine velvety texture that's characteristic of perfect pound cake sometimes eludes me because I don't bake them long enough. If your cake comes out too moist, dense, and kind of eggy tasting, it needed to bake longer. This is a live-and-learn lesson, made all the more troublesome if you have an oven that doesn't heat quite accurately (like mine).



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What We Talk About When We Talk About Banana Layer Cake . . .

In my house, about once a month, the age-old problem rears its head. You know the one. First, it's the deepening golden color, then the slight softening, followed by the brown speckles, and finally the pungent fragrance that will not be ignored. Oh sure, you get plenty of warning but, ultimately, your hand is forced. Bananas. Overripe bananas. We've faced this before, we'll face it again, but there's always the question . . . what should I make out of those brown bananas before they become fodder for the trash can or compost heap? Personally, I've had enough of quick breads and muffins for the moment. I can't remember, though, the last time I made a real banana cake. I've made a fabulous banana pound-cake in the past (and I should really do a post about that recipe someday--it's a winner), but I'd like to bake something a little more interesting than another fairly typical pound cake.

Such were my musings yesterday as I paged through my new, bright red, long-awaited copy of Nick Malgieri's most recent book, The Modern Baker. (Bakers, is there any more unalloyed bliss than spying a corrugated Amazon box on your front porch leaning shyly against the lone Adirondack chair, and just knowing that it contains a fantastic cookbook you've been craving for months? Certainly there is not.) Malgieri is a well known pastry chef, an educator at New York's Institute of Culinary Education, and he writes a mean cookbook. Once in a while he pops up on TV, demonstrating this or that technique. He always looks kind, friendly, and quite a bit like your favorite uncle.

He must have a soft spot for home bakers because a lot of what he writes is geared toward simplifying--or maybe I should say streamlining--things for those of us who bake in the real world. That is, those of us who bake without huge, uncluttered, stainless steel tables on which to spread out our work, without benefit of towering portable shelves filled top to bottom with premium spices of every description, without industrial lighting that would make a neurosurgeon put on his Ray-Bans, and without access to a walk-in cold-pantry the size of a two-car garage stocked top to bottom with fresh you-name-it. He manages to write about food in this uncomplicated way without completely emasculating his recipes. I don't know how he does it . . . he's from Newark, NJ . . . maybe that has something to do with it? Pretension doesn't appear to be in his vocabulary. What more could we ask? Anyway, I like him. (Did you hear me, Chef Malgieri? I LIKE YOU!)

Before I clam up about him I just have to mention another book he wrote, Perfect Cakes. Why? Because it is a perfect book. Get it from the library, folks, or take the plunge and buy it. Its recipes are a bit more involved than that of some of his other books, but the gorgeous stuff you could produce using Perfect Cakes alone would easily fill several high-end pastry carts. My two favorite items from this book thus far--I've tried about eight of the recipes and there are many more I still want to try--are the Dark-and-White Chocolate Cheese Cake (unbelievably good; I've made it a couple of times for Thanksgiving) and the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (I alter a few components of the recipe slightly, but as a base it's the best-tasting carrot cake I've ever had; I am going to do a post about it one day).

Someday, when I go completely around the bend, I'm gonna do a "Julie Powell" and systematically bake every single thing in that book over the course of a year . . . holy moly what a concept . . . I'm entering a trance-like state at the very thought of it . . . staring off into space right now . . .


Enough already! Getting back to the banana cake.

I used the recipe for Banana Coconut Rum Layer Cake from The Modern Baker, but I had no rum on hand (more's the pity) so left that ingredient out. It's a nice cake that, in terms of taste if not texture, reminds me completely of my mom's banana chiffon cake (the recipe for which seems to have vanished into the void, unfortunately). I wasn't feeling coconutty yesterday, so I decided not to use Malgieri's recommended coconut-coated whipped cream to ice the cake. What I did use to ice the cake was a hybrid I concocted out of a very reliable and fluffy buttercream recipe. Not insanely sweet, this buttercream's special fluffiness sets it apart from most customary bakery-style buttercreams. I wanted to see how this icing would taste if a little high-quality cinnamon and cocoa powder were added in with the sugar, and if a couple ounces of softened cream cheese were whipped in as well. That experiment was a raging success and I spread the luscious result on the banana cake. I made just enough icing while experimenting to fill the middle and coat the top, but that was the perfect amount--not too much of a good thing.

Thus I present my half-dressed banana layer cake, filled and topped with my hybridized version of fluffy light-chocolate and cinnamon buttercream. I've reworded the Malgieri recipe for brevity, but have left out no critical info. (The icing recipe, printed below, is a completely new adaptation I made of one I had used previously in a post that I called "Deep Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Mocha Frosting.")


Nick Malgieri's Banana Layer Cake
(originally from his Banana Rum Coconut Layer Cake recipe, pg. 248 of The Modern Baker)

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 350, and place a rack in the middle.

2 and 1/3 cups of All Purpose flour (I used unbleached)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed (I only had light brown and used that; it was fine)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 cup mashed banana (mashed by hand)
2/3 cup milk (I used whole)
1 tbsp. dark rum (I didn't have this on hand but the cake was still great; if you don't love the flavor of rum I wouldn't hesitate to leave it out altogether!)

Butter the bottom and sides of two 9" cake pans. Line the bottom with a parchment or wax paper disk, and then butter the disk.

Combine well the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl; set aside.

Combine the butter, sugars, and vanilla in the bowl of a mixer using the paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until light in color and texture, about 3 to 4 minutes. Beat the eggs into that, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, mix together the banana, milk, and rum (if you're using it), until blended.

On low speed, in the mixer bowl, add 1/3 of the flour mixture. Stopping as needed to scrape down the beaters and bowl, add in the banana mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Then, increase the speed to medium and beat the batter nonstop for 3 minutes. Divide the batter evenly between the two pans and smooth the tops. Bake on the middle rack of your oven until the cakes are, as Chef Malgieri instructs us, "well risen and deep golden, and feel firm when pressed in the center with a fingertip, 25 to 30 minutes."

Cool the cakes on a rack, in their pans, for 5 minutes. Remove from pans and continue cooling right side up on racks; remove the parchment/wax paper.



Jane's Fluffy Light-Chocolate & Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting

This recipe makes at least enough to frost an entire cake--top, middle, and sides--or to frost 24 cupcakes.

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup vegetable shortening
4 oz. of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1 cup and 2 Tbsp. heavy cream
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
2 lbs. of confectioners' sugar, sifted (approximately 8 or more cups)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (my favorite is Penzey's brand Vietnamese Cassia; it's pretty strong)
3 Tbsp. cocoa (Dutch process or regular, whichever you prefer; I use Dutch)

In a bowl, lightly mix the cinnamon and cocoa powder into the sifted confectioner's sugar with a fork or whisk. Set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and shortening on medium speed until light and creamy.
Add the sugar gradually to the shortening, and continue creaming until well blended. Add in the cream cheese, salt, and the vanilla, still mixing at medium speed at this point.

Pour 6 oz. of the heavy cream slowly and gradually into the bowl. Increase the speed to high and beat until the entire mixture is light and fluffy, at least a couple of minutes. Stop every now and then to scrape the bowl and the beaters.

Reserve the remaining 2 oz. of cream to use just in case the frosting seems too thick to you, or too dry. Add it in at your own discretion. Frosting too thin? Add in a bit more confectioners' sugar. Be sure to refrigerate, or freeze, any leftover frosting.

When your cake is cooled . . . frost it, slice it, eat it. Go bananas, if you feel like it.



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