I happen to work at a company that generously supplies a very ample amount of fresh fruit to its employees, including bananas. A colleague of mine often forgets about the bananas he's collected, and every now and then I end up with one of his very ripe bananas. Obviously the banana that is too ripe to eat is ideal for further ripening to turn into banana cake. On one of these occasions, I had some plain yoghurt in the fridge, so sought out a recipe that claimed to be moist, and also had yoghurt in its list of ingredients. I found quite a few promising recipes, but eventually settled on this one because it would be nice and quick (as no creaming of butter and sugar was required). It did not disappoint - in fact I think it is one of my favourite banana cake/bread recipes now. You get a wonderfully moist, banana flavourful cake with this recipe (although the great banana flavour in any banana cake is usually more down to quality bananas rather than the recipe).
I didn't think I had enough bananas (I even had to supplement the work banana with 2 bananas from our trip to France) so I halved the recipe, and right now, in the process of transcribing, I have realised I forgot to halve the amount of butter! Which would explain how it came out soooo moist, however one wonders what the texture would have been like if I had remembered to only use half the butter... I won't bother to try though, as there really was nothing wrong with the cake I baked! As a result, the recipe below has the amount of butter I would use to make a very nice, moist banana cake :)
Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe, soft, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 oz unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Method
Grease and line a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
Preheat the oven to 175 C
Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda together in a large bowl.
Mix the mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla with a wooden spoon in a medium bowl. Lightly fold the banana mixture into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula until just combined and the batter looks thick and chunky. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
Bake until the loaf is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
