Suddenly There Are 37 Bananas On Our Counter

For a morning treat, I’ve decided I prefer a slice of coffee cake to all other breakfast pastries, including pancakes, waffles, crepes, french toast, cinnamon rolls, and definitely donuts. The decadence makes it special — often I see sour cream and butter and milk in a recipe! — and thus for special occasions.

Our go-to morning cake is the incredible Sour Cream Coffee Cake from Zingerman’s Bakehouse, which we baked in bulk and gave as gifts for Christmas a few years ago. I made the same for Jeff and his groomsmen the weekend of his bachelor party, and I felt very wifely sending my man off with a cake. A week ago, on Easter morning, I sat at the kitchen counter while Jeff made me a delicious strawberry mint cake, which I now claim as my favorite during spring and summer months. Thinking way back, my grandma was the type to have an Entenmann’s cake on her counter when my siblings and I would visit, and that was certainly a special occasion!

As Jimmy Fallon said, while writing his thank you notes last week: “Thank you, quarantine, for bringing out the best in Americans — our resilience, our acts of support for one another and, for some reason, an obscene amount of banana bread.” We take part in this obscenity, having thus far baked a vegan banana bread, miso banana bread, whole wheat banana muffins, and now this blueberry banana coffee cake.

The cycle happens like this: Jeff loves bananas. Grocery deliveries are uncertain. There is no shortage of bananas. Every time we shop we stock up. Suddenly there are 37 bananas on our counter. Ugh, what are we going to do with these brown ones? I get bored. Then I start baking.

Most recently I tried an adaptation of my blueberry muffins in coffee cake form. It’s certainly less decadent than a traditional coffee cake, with banana supplying some of the moisture instead of the aforementioned various dairy, and a partial substitution of rye flour modeled after Kim Boyce’s zucchini bread, but we enjoyed it for days nonetheless. Perhaps that’s why we enjoyed it for days, as this quarantine is no longer a special occasion, but rather the new normal.

BLUEBERRY BANANA COFFEE CAKE

You’ll need:
2 cups frozen blueberries
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 cup rye flour
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup oat flour (or ground oats)
1/4 cup pecans, toasted and ground
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp ground or grated nutmeg
3 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk or almond milk
1 tsp vanilla
Scant 1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 to 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsb lemon juice (about 1 small lemon) or milk (I used lemon juice to complement the blueberries, but would milk go with the bananas better? Maybe!)

Preheat oven to 375.  Line an 8x8 (or similar size) cake pan with parchment and lightly coat with baking spray.  If you need to grind oats, or toast and grind nuts, do so now.

Pour the blueberries into a food processor and pulse until chopped like confetti.  Add 2 tbsp of the sugar over the berries and pulse once. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, remaining sugar, pecans, baking powder, baking soda, salt, coriander, and nutmeg.  In a separate bowl, mash the bananas, then add the vegetable oil, eggs, milk, vanilla, and almond extract.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Gently stir in the blueberry-sugar mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan.  Bake for about 1 hour, until the edge are slightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set pan on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Meanwhile, make the glaze by whisking together the powdered sugar and lemon juice (or milk), adding more of either as necessary to reach the desired consistency.  I prefer a thin glaze, for just a touch of sweetness. Drizzle glaze all over the top of the cake.