Perfectly good, moist, and easy banana bread, although I'm still looking for one with more depth of flavor to it. To note the changes -- I used unsalted butter instead of margarine, used low-fat (not fat free) cream cheese, used 1/4 cup brown sugar plus 1 cup white instead of all white, 3 mashed bananas (probably a little more than a cup, but it's how many I had), and I didn't make the streusel layer but instead mixed the cinnamon in with the dry ingredients and folded in the pecans at the end. Oh, and the recipe doesn't call for any salt, so I added 1/2 tsp of salt to the dry ingredients. I also had one larger loaf pan, and put about 2/3 of the batter into that (bake time of 55 minutes), and put the rest into muffin cups (in liners) that baked for about 35 minutes.

Reviewed On: Jul. 28, 2007

The cake was good and easy to make, but it seemed to be lacking something. I used unsalted butter, so if I make it again, I would probably either use salted butter or add more salt. I also made a half recipe in a bundt pan (I only had two bananas), and I didn't frost it or glaze it. I think I would also put a confectioner's sugar glaze on it, or else dust the whole thing with powdered sugar. I had melted the butter by mistake when I was trying to defrost it, so I put it in the freezer for a few minutes while I got the rest of the ingredients together, and blended the ingredients while the butter was still very liquid. I don't think that it affected the consistency of the cake, which was fine.

Reviewed On: Jul. 22, 2007

The cake seems moist and flavorful, but even with Baker's Joy in a non-stick bundt pan, the cake stuck, which has never happened to me before. I took it out of the oven and let it cool for 15 minutes before trying to turn it out, which is also what I normally do. Also, there's no way this cake will fit into a ten cup pan -- I used it in a regular 12-cup pan, and it rose right up to the top. I thought it looked like a lot of batter, and I was wondering about the tablespoon of baking powder. Didn't overflow, though. Because of the patches in the top of the cake, I melted 1/2 cup of apricot preserves with a little water, poured it over the cake, and covered it with shredded coconut, so it looks like a snowball cake now. Only other changes I made were to add 1 tsp of vanilla and I only had 3/4 cup of buttermilk so I topped it off with regular milk. That shouldn't have caused sticking. Tastes good, though. *edited to up the rating to four stars. The flavor was great and everyone raved. Next time, I will just prepare the pans differently.

Reviewed On: May 26, 2007