Tropic Island Cake

I don’t know if I invented this or not (does anyone invent anything these days), but we had three rather sorry looking bananas in the fridge at Chez Siberia and I had the idea that I wanted to add dried cocoanut and pineapple/pineapple juice and make a cake. Aunt Toby is very fond of cakes that have fruit in them (see cake, banana; cake, blueberry, and so forth) because they taste wonderful just..the…way…they…are. No frosting needed.

Not that Aunt Toby feels some sort of ill will toward frostings (see frosting, cream cheese), mind you; it’s just that with some cakes, it’s too much sweetness for me. You know that feeling when you start reaching for the cold milk because you just ate the biggest brownie (with walnuts) and it has chocolate icing on it and your mouth just ‘glugs’ up and you are anticipating going to the ER so that they can unhinge your jaw so that you can breath and swallow again? The other thing is that Aunt Toby’s mother (the aforementioned “Grand-ma-ma”) was from the UK and her idea of dressing up a cake involved opening a jar of home made apricot preserves, slathering that in between the layers and then sieving (if that is the term) a bit of powdered sugar on the top. C’est tout. Frostings were not a big part of cakes at Aunt Toby’s parents’ house and I’d like to think that there are cakes out there which can stand on their own very nicely without any audio visual aids, so to speak.

So, here we are, with a can of pineapple tidbits (doesn’t everyone have one of those in the back of the cupboard?) in pineapple juice, some dried plain cocoanut (not the moist, lovely long strand white sort that comes in a plastic bag, ok? That is great stuff but it’s covered in corn starch or something to keep the strands all separate and dried shredded is good, believe me), and the three aforementioned dark brown, highly fragrant (vs. smelly) bananas and a tube pan with a removable insert.

Tropic Island Cake
First – grease and shake flour all over the inside of the tube pan, put together and set aside.

Second – Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put a rack in the center of the oven.

Gather your ingredients – you will need:
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp of cinnamon or nutmeg
1 stick of butter at room temperature (or, zap it in a microwave for 30 seconds)
4 eggs
3/4 cup of sugar
3 ripe bananas, mashed up
1 cup of dried cocoanut
1 can of pineapple in juice (crushed is best but I made this with a can of chunks that I chopped up fine), drained and save the juice in a separate container

Directions:
Take the cup of dried cocoanut and put into a dish and pour in 3/4 cup of the pineapple juice. Stir and let sit while you do everything else. It will soak up a lot of the juice. That is ok.

Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer.
Add the eggs to the mixer bowl one at a time and mix well.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.
Measure out one cup of either the chopped pineapple or crushed pineapple.
You now have four things besides the mixer bowl: pineapple, the cocoanut soaking in pineapple juice, and the bananas and the flour mix.
Throw in the bananas into the mixing bowl and mix up. Add some of the flour mix.
Throw in the pineapple into the mixing bowl and mix up. Add more of the flour mix.
Throw in the cocoanut-pineapple juice mixture (scrape it all out to get all of it) into the mixing bowl and mix up. Add the rest of the flour mix. Mix well. This will be pretty dense and thick – sort of like carrot cake batter or banana bread batter.

Carefully plop this into the greased and floured tube pan, turning the pan as you do, so that it is even. Put on the rack. If your tube pan has a tendency to leak (after 60 years of use – I inherited this from my Ma-Ma- the seal around the inside edge is a little wiggly), put a cookie sheet on the rack BELOW (not right under the pan – this changes the whole cooking dynamic of the cake – put it on the rack below) the cake.

Bake for 60 minutes and test with a fork – this should be done; the top should be a little bit crisp and will split open (well, mine did) but if you press on it, it will spring back. Cool cake in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Then, run a knife around the inside edge, open the release on the outside ring of the pan and take that off. Cool completely.

Try to do this when there are no munchkins in the house – burned fingers and all that.
This cake needs nothing. I served this up and got big thumbs up from the guys – and NO FROSTING.

Enjoy.