'Nana Cake

I love, love, love Banana bread. So when I heard rave reviews about a certain banana cake which had a unique 'cooling' process, I had to try. It also doesn't hurt that the recipe itself had more than 330 reviewers rating it 5 stars!

Impatiently I waited for my bananas to go black, strictly checking and warning the boy NOT to eat them. Luckily, like me, he likes his bananas on the firm, green side.

Finally it was time. I mixed up all the ingredients and found I was 1/2 cup short of flour.

D'OH!!!

After Susan's comments last time I baked, I thought that for ONCE, I would follow the recipe exactly. The ONLY change I made was using salted butter (that was all I had) and omitting the salt, figuring it would even itself out.

As I had already done the grocery run once that day, I asked the boy to pick up some more flour on the way home from work.

The process involves baking the cake for an hour (took 1.5 hours for me, even though my thermometer showed that I had the right temperature) and then straight into the freezer for 45 minutes.

Those 45 minutes were agony as the smell of the cake had already permeated and the boy kept asking me "Is it done yet? Should I put the kettle on now? How much longer?". Finally I pulled out the cake and cut out a big piece each for me and the boy. I omitted the frosting as, quite frankly, our butts didn't need it.

It was good! A bit too sweet for my liking but nice and moist with a gorgeous crackly crusty top. I didn't know how to wrap the cake as I wanted to preserve the crackly top so I left it overnight in the cooled oven but sadly when I went for my breakfast piece (hey, cake is a perfectly decent balanced breakfast), the topping had become sticky and moist. Not bad but not the lovely crumb of last night.

Anyhow, I wouldn't mind making it again with more banana, less sugar and less butter although not sure how I could decrease without affecting the texture... any suggestions?