Years ago, I was wandering around the cookbook section of one bookstore or another and I came across a book called Comfort Foods by Rita M. Harris . Some of the recipes are totally useless to me (you know when you are silly enough to buy a cookbook for a favorite recipe or two?) but one stands out in particular. With a couple of changes, the recipe for Banana Cake is the absolute best that I have ever come across. Bake it in a large pyrex, or two small ones, and it’s banana bread. Bake it in two round cake pans and frost it, and it’s good enough to be a cake.

It’s so good that I freeze half of it so that my husband doesn’t eat all of it right away…and he hacks off frozen bits to eat from the freezer.

Favorite Banana Bread

1 stick unsalted butter

1 3/4 c sugar

3 large eggs

4 ripe bananas (you can use those almost-rotten ones on the counter, or any variation of yellow to brown ones)

2 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1/8 tsp salt

2/3 c buttermilk or slightly less than 2/3 cup milk with a squirt or two of lemon juice to curdle it

1/4 cup golden raisins or chopped dates

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2.Butter and flour 2 8-inch cake pans or one 9×11 cake pan (or use baking spray with flour to make life easier)

3. Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and bananas and mix well.

4. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt.

5. Add dry and wet incredible alternately to banana mixture and mix well until smooth.

6. Add raisins or chopper dates.

Bake for 30 minutes or until done (slightly longer if you’re making one bigger cake)

Cool completely before frosting, freezing or eating right out of the pan.

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