Happy eclipse day!! Doing anything special for the big event? Did you get your hands on those coveted eclipse glasses? My answers: no and no. I’m so boring. I’ll just stay inside with the pups and feel weird for those few minutes when it’s a little dark out at 2:30 in the afternoon.
Come back and tell me how cool it was to see, ok?
Let’s get into the good stuff. I’ve been meaning to bake my favorite banana cake as a banana layer cake for the past year. Do you remember when I shared my love/obsession for this banana cake? You know, the cake recipe I stalked Kevin’s cousin for like a complete lunatic? Turns out, it’s just as moist/perfect/unbelievable as a layer cake too.
ut we’re not only changing the shape and presentation of the banana cake today. We’re also serving it up with THE BEST FROSTING TO EVER HIT YOUR LIPS. Dramatic? Who… me?
And the frosting is what I really want to focus on today.
I’m not sure why I waited over 30 years to turn regular cream cheese frosting into brown butter cream cheese frosting? Learn from my mistake and don’t waste any more time. It’s everything you love about cream cheese frosting– tangy and sweet, but not as tooth-decaying sweet as buttercream. Creamy, thick, silky, smooth. Yep, all of the above. But this version has brown butter hiding inside. Those specks of nutty toasty buttery goodness bring cream cheese frosting up about 700 notches on the delicious scale. Do you want to upgrade a great dessert into the mega-watt billionaire of desserts? Add brown butter. I wrote an entire tutorial on how to brown butter so you can learn exactly how it’s done!
Ingredients
- BANANA CAKE
- 3 c sifted cake flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 c shortening
- 2 1/4 c granulated sugar
- 3eggs, well beaten
- 1 1/2 c mashed ripe bananas (about 4 bananas)
- 1 1/8 c buttermilk
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
- 3/4 chot milk
- 1/2 cbutter
- 1/2 cshortening (butter flavored crisco not recommended)
- 1 tspvanilla extract
- 1 Tbspcornstarch
- 1 cgranulated sugar
Directions
- BANANA CAKE: Sift the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
- Cream the shortening; gradually add sugar and continue creaming. Add beaten eggs and bananas and mix well.
- Add the flour mixture alternately with the combined buttermilk and vanilla, beginning and ending with the flour.
- Pour into two 9 inch layer pans that have been greased and floured. Bake at 375 for 25 to 30 minutes.
- BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: Heat milk until very hot but not boiling.
- Cream the butter and shortening until fluffy. Gradually add cornstarch and sugar. Beat well after each addition, then add vanilla.
- Add hot milk to sugar mixture a little at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition until all the sugar dissolves and it is thick enough to spread. It’s very important to add the milk a little at a time or it will cause the frosting to curdle.
