Buckwheat Banana Cake with Pecans and Maple
Buckwheat Banana Cake with Pecans and Maple Syrup
The bananas grown locally in Queensland are amazingly good, particularly if you can buy them from a grower who harvests at a stage of ripeness that mean they don’t need to be gassed. Only those bananas will reach a state of unctuous creaminess that a supermarket banana will never achieve.
Real bananas are addictive, but some weeks, by the time market day arrives, there are over ripe bananas languishing in the fruit bowl. They’re perfect for a smoothie, for muffins, for an instant banana ice cream or banana cake. If time is tight, I simply peel off the skin and freeze the roughly chopped fruit to thaw and use at a later time but I never throw them out.
The inspiration for this recipe was our family’s favourite breakfast, sliced bananas, maple syrup and chopped pecans dusted with cinnamon on top of buckwheat pancakes. It a combo that’s delicious together.
Making a cake with buckwheat flour can be a gamble. The results of my experiments in the past have been mixed so I heeded the sage advice of baking guru Alice Medrich and handled the buckwheat flour with extreme care to avoid it toughening from being over processed.
The flavour combination lived up to expectation. The buckwheat flour makes a cake that is dense but not heavy, a great cake to slice and pack into a lunchbox. The nutty banana flavour is not very sweet, just moist and moreish. This cake is gluten free.
Buckwheat Banana Cake with Maple Syrup and Pecans
320g buckwheat flour
125g brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
125g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
3 ripe large bananas (approx 340g)
125ml thick natural yoghurt
125ml maple syrup
2 large eggs
60g butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
Preheat the oven to 170C
Grease and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.
In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients and whisk to thoroughly combine and break up any clumps.
In a second bowl, roughly mash the bananas, then whisk in the yoghurt, maple syrup, eggs, butter and vanilla essence.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the banana mixture then lightly fold the ingredients together.
Do not overmix.
Pour the batter into the loaf tin, smooth the top, then bake for approx 60 minutes or until the cake is cooked when tested with a skewer.
Tip the cake onto a cake wire to cool.
Ice, slice and enjoy.
Maple Cream Cheese Topping
90g cream cheese
15g butter
90g icing sugar
15mls (3 teaspoons) lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
60g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
Beat the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar, maple syrup and lemon juice together until smooth and creamy.
Spread onto the top of the cooled cake and scatter the nuts on top.
Lightly press the nuts into the icing to make them stick.
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23 comments on “Buckwheat Banana Cake with Pecans and Maple”
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Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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I think I have a bag of buckwheat flour languishing somewhere. Time to find some ripe bananas to go with it, which as you know, do not come our way down south- they come green, and then are ripened on the shelves, never the same as those bought in Queensland.
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The flavour is a nice change from the usual banana cake, give it a go..
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Sounds delicious and is on my list to make!
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The nutty smoky flavours work so well with banana, enjoy…
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Buckwheat + Maple syrup + Pecans = Amazing combo!
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Thanks Chef K, a delicious mix indeed
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This looks like a delicious recipe, thanks for sharing 😊
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You’re welcome
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Sounds healthy & tasty!
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Yes it ticks both boxes Megala
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Maple syrup cream cheese icing atop a gf buckwheat banana bread? So on my list of ‘to do’ when the bananas are ripe. I have eaten some bananas like that when visiting up north and you are so right, just wonderful.
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Thanks Cheery, a punt that paid off big time…
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Looks so good!
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Thanks…
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This looks and sounds delicious! Can you suggest an alternative icing that you feel would work, as I can’t do cream cheese, and I feel the cake needs something a bit lavish on top?
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Thanks Kate. I used Liddell’s lactose free cream cheese. It’s tricky to make a topping that’s good without dairy, margarine just doesn’t cut it IMHO. This link leads to a possibility. http://www.texanerin.com/vegan-cream-cheese-frosting/
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Thanks for this! After being off most dairy products for so long, I find I actually don’t enjoy the taste of cream cheese much any more, so I’m always looking for alternatives which have a similar texure.
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Ooh – the maple cream cheese icing looks great. Buckwheat is a good choice, too. I can see it would compliment the sweetness of ripe bananas and provide a nutty taste of its own.
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Thanks Debi, delicious flavours together. I rarely ice cakes but it was really complimentary
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Fabulous Sandra, I love buckwheat and maple syrup…they both have an underlying smokiness that goes beautifully together!
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It’s true Beck, yum….
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