Banana Cake. Peanut Streusel.

I love baking Plain Jane cakes. The ones you can whip up quickly in a bowl and the ones where you do not need to fuss about frostings and such. I specially like the kinds you can bake on a weekend and leave in the fridge to snack on during the week.

The brown butter banana cake from food52 checks all the boxes. As an added bonus, there is no need to even bring out a whip; you only need a blender or a food processor. The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I adapted mine to fit a 6 inch springform pan. If you are comparing recipes, you will notice that my cake recipe is halved but I kept the full recipe for peanut streusel. That's because the peanuts and oats add a real crunch and more is really a lot better in this case.

Here's the easy breezy way to get your cake fix.

Ingredients
For Streusel
40 grams butter (I use salted Amul butter)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup oats
2/3 cup salted, roasted peanuts

For cake
50 grams butter (I use salted Amul butter)
1 cup minus 2 tbsp plain flour (measure a cup, then take out 2 tbsp)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 ripe banana
1 egg
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup yogurt
1 tbsp cointreau (or orange juice)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Line the base of a 6 inch springform pan with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 180 C.

First make the streusel. Chop the peanuts or pulse them in a spice grinder until coarsely chopped.

Mix the peanuts with oats and sugar. Melt the butter, pour on top of the other ingredients and mix until the whole thing resembles mortar. Set aside.

On to the cake now. In a small pan, melt the butter. Once it melts, reduce the heat but let the whole thing sizzle around for 4-5 minutes until the brown bits separate and fall to the bottom of the pan. Let cool while you get to the rest of your cake batter.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and baking soda in a large bowl. Slice the banana and put into your food processor or blender alongwith the egg, sugar, yogurt, cointreau and vanilla essence. The browned butter should be cool to touch by now; add that too and pulse until everything is well blended and you don't see any banana pieces.

Pour this blend over the dry ingredient and mix just until there are no streaks of flour. This is a fairly wet batter so you can just spoon or pour the whole thing into your prepared pan. Scatter the streusel all over the top of the batter. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Let cool for 15-20 minutes before you unmould, then cool completely over a wire rack.

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