Slimmed down banana cake with chocolate chips
Award-winning English food writer, journalist and broadcaster Nigel Slate shared his recipe for Chocolate Muscovado Banana Cake in Food52.com's new cookbook “Genius Recipes.” The moment I saw the picture of Nigel's “cake” I was hooked. I could almost smell the aroma of it baking and I wanted to taste that “cake” now.
I've loved well-made banana bread since a college roommate, Bob Rhode, brought a loaf of his Mom's very dense, moist banana bread back with him from a visit home and shared a slim slice. To date myself, it was seriously “righteous.” Every banana bread I've ever had or made has always been compared to Rhode's Mom's.
If you are swift of eye, you noticed that Slate's recipe is called “cake” not “bread.” That's not an error. Slate created this as a breakfast sweet and, as the recipe's headnote states: “Let's face it — banana bread is really just cake. ... At least this breakfast cake has a whole lot of banana in it.”
See. Hooked.
As usual, especially since I had all the ingredients available, including a pound of “ripe” bananas, I headed to my kitchen, craving a slice of Slate's amazing looking “cake.”
First, though, I had to figure out how to juggle the ingredients and make them fit this Lean Wizard's new, healthier food program — less fat and much less sugar.
I've given up on vanquishing all sugars in a dessert since sugar is there for more than its sweet flavor. Sugar crystals, when whipped with shortening, sustain the air bubbles beaten into the shortening (in this case butter) that the leavening (baking powder or soda) needs to inflate and make it rise.
Recent baking experiments showed me that I can cut up to half the sugars and end up with sufficient sugars to perform the magic required for brownies and cake, so why not in this banana bread dressed-up as cake? I knew, since I'd be using dark brown sugar (emphasis on the word “dark”) I'd have the flavor notes that molasses brings to the party; they'd just be subtler.
Slate's cake used a stick of butter, so I cut that in half and went with my tried, true and trusted substitution: drained unsweetened, unflavored applesauce.
The third issue was not guaranteed to be successful. Slate makes his “chocolate” banana cake with 3.5 ounces of chopped-up “real” dark chocolate. That much chocolate delivers 24 sugar grams almost equal to 6 teaspoons.
Instead of using a chopped-up dark chocolate bar I went with a new no-added-sugar product that I'd found at my local health food store that, so far, has worked great for me: Lily's brand dark chocolate baking chips. An ounce of Lily's chips contain the same 8 fat grams as regular chips but, without sugar contain only 110 calories. That's a significant difference.
With my substitutions ready I stirred together my banana bread following Slate's specific directions and got it baking. The aroma that filled my kitchen was exactly as I believed it would be. Once baked and cooled I couldn't wait to taste it.
My chocolate chip banana bread was worth the wait; absolutely.
If you like the combination of bananas and chocolate, you're gonna love this slimmed-down version of Slate's cake.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write him at don@theleanwizard.com.