Recipe Box- Recipe  #14

Pineapple Banana Cake and Never Fail Frosting:

Cake:

3/4 cup butter

3/4 tsp. salt

5 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 cups sugar

3 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups milk

5 egg whites

Cream butter, add sugar gradually.  Sift flour once before measuring.  Mix and sift flour, salt and baking powder and add alternately with milk.  Add vanilla.  Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.  Bake, in two 9-inch layer pans for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Filling:

2 large bananas

2 tsp lemon juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup pineapple juice

2/3 cup crushed pineapple

3 Tbsp cornstarch

1/2 cup water.

Mash bananas, add pineapple and lemon juice.  Mix together cornstarch and sugar, add water and pineapple juice.  Cook in double boiler until clear.  Add banana mixture and cook 2 minutes longer.  Let cool and spread between layers.  This may be used on top of cake also, but I (author of recipe) prefer to ice cake on top and sides with the following icing:

Never Fail Frosting: (we will see about that!)

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

2 unbeaten egg whites

3 Tbsp water

1 tsp vanilla

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in top of double boiler.  Beat with electric beater for 3 minutes.  Remove from stove and add vanilla.  Keep over hot boiler and spread over cake.

Hello to my recipe box readers!!
The next recipe pulled is a lovely sounding cake.  Pineapple-Banana to be specific.

Again, baking not my forte but here we go!

I forgot to add the bananas to this pic!

I'm ready to begin and I'm not really sure what "creaming butter" means?

Good old google to the rescue!  It means to mash or use a mixer to incorporate the butter and sugar until smooth.  Okay, I got it.

So, I've been mixing for a while and the butter is sticking to the mixer but I'll keep on mixing the other ingredients.

Very hard on the arm!

It's getting looser as I'm adding the milk and flour.  Wow, 5 tsp of baking powder.  Does that seem like a lot?  I wouldn't really know since I don't ever bake cakes from scratch.  Duncan Hines is my go to for cakes!  How sad for my two boys (actually they are young men now) that their mom never baked anything, right?  Do I feel guilty?  Heck no!

Hey, but for a school project I made pierogi's from scratch!  Yes I DID! 

That should count for something, right? 

Note to Self- if you make this cake again, please use the nice Kitchen Aide Mixer that your nice husband bought you.  This hand mixer doesn't cut it.  The ingredients are really thick and my arm is very tired (kind of like when I made pirogi's from scratch...hmmm)

And, I had to wash the mixing paddles and am now going to whip the egg whites.  Having to wash stuff in the middle of baking is never a good idea.

Stiff peaks!

I do enjoy whipping up egg whites, though. 

After folding in the egg whites, it did make the batter less doughy but this is still such a dense cake. 

The recipe doesn't say to butter or flour the cake pans, so I'm not going to.

Making the filling was a little weird.  I kept the sugar and cornstarch over the double boiler for a really long time as I tried to define what "clear" meant.  20 minutes, at least.  Finally, my hubbie asked me "what is wrong?" and I had him come and take a look.  In a very definitive tone, he said "That is clear".  Me, just wanting this cake thing to be done decided that he made sense.  To me, it wasn't really clear (not a double entandre, but could be construed as such) but whatever. 

Banana mixture went in.  Cooled. 

Filling applied to cake.  Please don't notice the mismatched cake sizes.  Or if you are noticing and thinking what the heck?  What is this crazy woman doing?? 

Do, however, notice the pretty cake plate!

I had two different cake pans...YIKES!  It shouldn't matter what it looks like, right?  It's the thought that counts when someone bakes you a cake...actually takes the intense amount of time to make pirogi's...eh hem...I mean cake, right?

Never fail icing time! 

I think I failed the Never Fail Icing.  It cooked and cooked and I stirred and stirred but it was still so thin and watery.   Hmmm...weird.  The only thing that I can think of is that the double boiler wasn't quite boiling when I started mixing?

Is it supposed to look like this? I have no idea.  But, again, it's all about the taste right?

This wins the weirdest looking cake award!!

Looks dry

After I let it cool, the icing just sort of disappeared.  Where did it go?

The cake tasted pretty good but the icing was a disaster. It seemed like both the filling and the icing (yes, it was too thin) were absorbed into the dense cake.  I wouldn't recommend a novice baker attempting this one.  There was a lot of information that was missing from the recipe but I love the idea of a banana-pineapple cake!  Perhaps there are some recipes out there that are lighter versions of this cake.  Also, another note to self- get two cake pans of the same size!!
I will look for an updated version of this vintage recipe and would love to try this again.  See you all next recipe!