Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Honey Frosting and Honey-Baked Tortilla Chips (This Is What My Memories Taste Like)

When I was a kid, we spent almost every weekend in the mountains. I grew up in Colorado, and my parents (my dad in particular) were keen to not let all that fresh air and rocky terrain go to waste.

In the winter we skied (of course) and drove horribly environmentally-unfriendly snowmobiles around and across meadows, sometimes clinging with unabashed joy to an inner-tube  anchored to the rear with a sturdy rope.

The summer, though, the summers were for exploring. My parents would pack up an easy lunch of these pb banana burrito things: tortillas spread liberally with peanut butter and a generous squirt of honey, topped with slices of banana. Rolled up tightly, they were packed into a cooler with cans of Tab or Diet Coke and water, maybe carrots. And beer. There was always beer. 

Off we would go, taking back roads in a jeep with a roll bar, climbing up higher and higher (and when your starting point is nearly 12,000 feet above sea level...) stopping to check out ghost towns (actual, deserted, creepy ghost towns),  old cemeteries, massive lakes, and herds of animals grazing in fields.

This cake is in honor of that perfect portable lunch and those long summer days of hiking, fighting off mosquitos, and learning how to pee standing up without getting any on your pants. To getting sunburnt and worn out, and to the long drives back to the house, the sun set, dad telling us stories about the stars. 

Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Honey Frosting and Honey-Baked Tortilla Chips
Preheat oven to 350°; Prep two 6" round cake pans

Cake:
2 c (250 g) all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 c (100 g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 c (112 g) neutral oil
1 c (227 g; about 2 large) pureed ripe banana (not banana-bread ripe)
1 t vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a separate large bowl throughly whisk together the sugar, eggs, oil, pureed banana, and vanilla extract. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until throughly mixed. Divide evenly between the two pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the tops spring back when pressed, a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, and the sides start pulling away from the pan. Remove to a rack and let cool in the pans for 5 minutes before turning the cakes out to cool completely.

Frosting:
6 oz (TK g) cream cheese, at warm room temperature
6 T ( TK g; 3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at warm room temperature
2/3 c (170 g) peanut butter
5 T (tk g) honey

Whip all of the ingredients together until throughly combined and smooth. Fill and frost the cake.

Honey-Baked Tortilla Chips:
One 8" tortilla
1 T  honey
1 T water

Mix the honey and water together in a small bowl. Liberally brush both sides of the tortilla with the honey-water. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and put into a preheated 350° oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and minimally tacky to the touch. Let cool. Cut up as desired to decorate the frosted cake.

A Short Bit On Blood-Warm

I first came upon the term blood-warm (sometimes blood heat) as a temperature indicator while reading through Hannah Glasse's 1747 book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple.

It came up in a recipe for a pretty cake to describe the state of heated cream and butter to be used. Instantly captivated by the morbid weirdness of it to my modern mind, more than that, I found it remarkable how intuitive it was. No need for a thermometer to tell me 98.6°, I really could feel it. 

These days we use lukewarm. Interestingly, the word lukewarm dates to at least the 14th century, so why use blood-warm or blood heat I'm not sure. Cursory research tells me nothing—literally nothing—as it pertains to the term and cooking. That said, there must be something on this history out there. If you know, please enlighten me!  

As a culinary tool, blood-warm and blood heat seemed to loose favor as an adjective in the early 20th century, so I was beyond surprised to stumble across this book published in 1988 that uses blood heat copiously in its recipes: 

Anyone familiar with more European-centric baking books and their use of this term?   

10: 15 on a Saturday Night Cake (This Is What My Memories Taste Like)

Before we begin, if you don't know the song by The Cure. Give it a listen:

Now, the cake.

When I was 16, at exactly 10:15 on a Saturday night, that song came on the radio while I was parked in the lot of a Loaf & Jug waiting on the crazy boy I was crazy about who was inside buying a Cherry Pepsi, and thinking how cool it was that the song was playing right then. At the same time. (It's amazing what impresses teenagers.)
     To this day, every time I hear the song, I think of that parking lot and that boy and how we would drive around in my car drinking Cherry Pepsi laced with cheap whiskey, me doing all of the driving and he doing (almost) all of the drinking. Now, that makes it sound like I was a responsible teen, but really I was just the one with the car and he didn't have a license (sorry Mom). 
     One of my long-term personal projects is This Is What My Memories Taste Like, wherein I interpret memories through cake. Kinda wacky, I know, but it's awfully fun trying to figure it all out. Sort of chosen synesthesia.
    The idea for the cake itself (Chocolate Cherry Pepsi with a Whiskey Caramel-ish Sauce) came easily enough, but how to incorporate the song? Had to think on that one. I really wanted the drip drip drip but, as portable leaky faucets are not really a thing, I decided to try out another high school standard: lab equipment. I think it worked out rather nicely:

Chocolate Cherry Pepsi Layer Cake with Whiskey Caramel(ish) Sauce

Preheat oven to 350°; prepare three 8" round cake pans

For the cake:
2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (64 grams) cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup (240 grams) sour cream, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (112 grams) neutral oil
1 1/2 cups (330 grams) light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (240 grams) Cherry Pepsi

For the Caramel(ish) Sauce:
1 stick (226 grams) unsalted butter
1 cup (220 grams) light brown sugar
1/2 cup (120 grams) heavy cream
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons (45 grams) whiskey, baker's choice

To serve: Whipped Cream and Cherry Jam

To make the cake: In a medium-sized bowl, sift or thoroughly whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a separate large bowl, whisk together the sour cream, vanilla, oil, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and eggs until very well combined. Gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until incorporated. Whisk in the Cherry Pepsi.

Divide the batter evenly between the three pans and bake for 25-30 minutes until the cakes start pulling away from the sides of the pans and a toothpick inserted in the center come out clean. 

Set the pans on racks to cool for 10 minutes, then remove the cakes from the pans to cool completely. 

To make the sauce: Stir together all of the ingredients except for the whiskey in a saucepan set over medium heat. Let gently bubble about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and carefully stir in the whiskey. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

To knock up the cherry flavor a bit, I spread 1/4 cup good cherry jam between each layer and then sparingly filled and speckled with unsweetened whipped cream. 

Serve the slices with the sauce on the side; spoon it on or use lab equipment about let it drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip. 

Grounded by Cake

Wow. It's been a while. I've been baking up a storm, but putting anything here . . . slipped past me. And you know when you've stopped doing something for a greater length of time, the anxiety to start again? What's the right cake? How to be witty about frosting? How deep do I delve into the history of Tomato Soup Cake? How to choose? Am I really stressing this much about cake?

Endless question marks later, I've had a bad week, which is not part of the story really, but last night I felt the need to bake a grounding sort of cake, a cake that would anchor me back to the core of what I love to do. And this desire led me to one of my very first-love cakes: Nigella Lawson's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from How to Be a Domestic Goddess. 

A little back story: When I first moved to NYC, I had a lot of trouble finding work in publishing (the reason I came here), so I took a job at the now-a-Trader-Joe's Barnes and Noble in Chelsea. As long as I was with books, so be it. And like many a bookstore employee, I might pretend to be dusting or shelving or, well, working, while instead pouring though the hundreds of books surrounding me.

Often assigned to the cookbook department, it was there that I found How to Be a Domestic Goddess and, more importantly, that hypnotic Nigella voice. You can read the words Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake and, depending on the accent, etc, they sound boring and bland or a bit silly (loaf is a silly word), but in that Nigella way it sounds like perfection. Classic. Necessary. The little black dress of cakes. (Am I taking this too far?!) 

Anyway, there are many more books and cakes and stories that make up my own, but there is something about that one Nigella cake and the way finding her work led me to connect the words and images and cakes into my particular sort of culinary love.

This in mind, I set out to bake the first-love cake last night . . . and I burnt the chocolate, and the Muscavado that was in the back of the cabinet had gone all hard and lumpy, and I just wanted to the bake the damn cake more than I wanted to take the time to re-melt chocolate or soften the sugar (priorities can be so weird), so I kept on and baked it and, as this one needs a night to sit and chill (as did I), I left it be.

This morning, while B "cooked me a hamburger," I ate a slice for breakfast smeared with cold cream cheese, the way Nigella likes it. It was so perfectly, blissfully good, burnt-chocolate-lumpy-sugar and all. As I sat loving over it, waiting for the hamburger to finish so I could get the kid to wear pants, this bit knocked its way into my brain: Everything has its lumps and burnt parts but sometimes you just have to keep on—in baking and in writing and in pleading "for the sake of all that's decent, put on some pants!". 

That's something. An awfully cheesy something, but meh, I've got a cake.
Find the recipe for Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake HERE.