Peachy Banana Honey Pecan Cake

There is nothing like a warm slice of fruit, nut and honey cake to go with the morning coffee or tea. This big fat cake is a perfect treat to serve during the Rosh Hashanah holiday or for any weekend morning where the coffee is bottomless and the eating should be simple, but good.

It also uses up leftovers lingering around the kitchen – instead of the compost pile, these things are even better as second-acts. The cake will be slightly darker than most banana breads because of the tiny bit of cocoa in the batter – especially if you use Hershey’s dark cocoa –  but it also lends a nice back note finish to the flavor. It doesn’t taste like chocolate cake. Although that might another good recipe idea – morning chocolate coffee cake, hmmm….

The finished cake will have a nice crusty edge and taste like banana bread but more interesting because of that old very ripe peach. We like pecans with banana cake, but walnuts, or even sans-the-nuts will be fine.

Sour cream or creme fraiche instead of yogurt will work, but make sure you use something with tang. If you wish to make it all dairy-free, use a nondairy substitute for the yogurt. The tang gives it a nice balance to offset the fruit and honey. It’s a small tang, but necessary. I don’t think that adding lemon juice to nondairy milk would sour anything, but give it a try anyway – it’ll at least make a fun science project. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice per 8 oz. of nondairy milk (about a cup). Let it sit and perform circus acts for about 10 minutes and use it in place of the yogurt – but only 45 grams or 1/4 cup. Save the rest for another experiment recipe. And if you’re good with the yogurt – forget everything I said in this paragraph.

Speaking of. Anyone notice the Canteen page looks a little different? Kind of the same, only different. We updated the theme from a dinosaur to something with more widgets than I have chocolate in the cupboard. The menu group at the top is a little more organized. I expanded and reorganized the index a bit, especially using “categories” and it should be easier to find, say, donuts. Chocolate is still the largest group, as it should be.  Muffins are no longer sequestered under cupcakes, and cakes should not include cupcakes. Just go explore and if you have questions there is a contact button on the bottom of the page and under the menu called “about”.  Just like moving into a new space, and unpacking all the boxes, stuff will get rearranged a little bit until we are sure everything looks just right. Just fair warning so you don’t trip over the footstool if I move it a little bit. Heck, you probably won’t even notice.

For those of you celebrating Rosh Hashanah, a big Shana Tova to you all. For those of you just celebrating a nice long weekend, and wishing for something good to eat that is quick and easy – this one is for you. By the time the coffee is finished brewing this can be in the oven.

And I leave you with this. I really really really want a Belgian waffle maker so we can make homemade waffles more often (read: twice a year). But. We still can’t agree on which one to buy nor can we figure out why one costs $70 and another costs $200.  Why?

Meantime. Let us eat cake.