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Easy French Dessert: Banana Pound Cake

The quatre-quart is a classic French easy to make cake.  The idea and is that you use the same weight for the four (quatre) basic ingredients (eggs, flour, sugar, butter).  The recipe below is a variation on the traditional quatre-quart (pound cake) that we use often when we have bananas that are too ripe to eat as is and that we can’t bear to put in the compost.  The bananas makes this cake very moist — it is not a banana bread but truly a delicious cake that melts in your mouth.  So check out our easy Art of the Home banana pound cake recipe (- great for an afternoon snack, for a picnic or to bring to a party.  Enjoy and bon appétit!

Easy French Dessert: Banana Pound Cake

Banana pound cake

Banana Pound Cake (Quatre-quart à la Banane)

Banana Pound Cake Banana Pound Cake (Quatre-quart à la Banane)

Banana Pound Cake (Quatre-Quart à la Banane)

by Art of the Home

Ingredients (for 6-8 servings)

  • 3 eggs
  • Weight of your 3 eggs in sugar
  • Weight of your  3 eggs in sifted flour
  • Weight of your 3 eggs of melted salted butter
  • 1-2 very ripe bananas
  • 1 bag of sugar vanilla

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 °F.
  2. Butter and flour cake pan (we used this 9-inch loaf pan). Place parchment paper at the bottom.
  3. Weight eggs to find out how much of the other ingredients you will need (typically about 170 grams or so).  Beat eggs as you would for an omelet.  Add cooled off melted butter
  4. Add sugar and vanilla sugar.  Then add sifted flour.
  5. In a separate small bowl or plate, mash ripe bananas with a fork and add to your mixture.
  6. Pour in cake pan.
  7. Bake 40-45 minutes in a preheated oven (350 °F).  Insert knife to check but don’t overcook otherwise it will not be as moist.
  8. Gently detach the sides of cake with a knife and place on cooling rack.
  9. Wait until it cools off to slice.


    

Comments

  1. mary ellen says:
    February 10, 2012 at 10:17 am

    please explain how much a “bag of sugar vanilla” is and is this sugar which has been infused with a vanilla bean? and for how long?

  2. Nancy Jordan says:
    February 10, 2012 at 11:19 am

    This looks wonderful but I have a couple of questions. . .
    1. You say 1 bag of sugar vanilla but how much is in the bag?
    2. For weight of eggs, I assume you mean the liquid only, not the weight including the shells?

    These may be silly/dumb questions, but I’m from the States and am just beginning to experiment with European cooking standards of weight vs US standards of cups.

  3. Art of the Home says:
    February 10, 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Good question Mary ellen. A vanilla sugar bag is 9 g (Dr. Oetker brand for example in the US). When we use our homemade vanilla sugar, where we muddle vanilla bean bits and sugar, then we put 1 Tbsp (a bit more than 9 g but that’s OK). Hope that helps.

  4. Art of the Home says:
    February 10, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    These are 2 great questions – thanks for asking Nancy, we were not the only one wondering.
    1. Vanilla sugar:the Dr. Oetker vanilla sugar bag is 9 grams. For homemade vanilla sugar, 1 Tbsp works.
    2. Eggs: the weight is actually with the shell. But sometimes I don’t even weight mine, if they look average size, I assume they weight the average weight times 3 (about 170-180 g depending on the size) and use that number – never have any complains and the cake is gone quicker that it took me to make it! But if you want to be exact, weight them with the shell.
    Hope that helps. Enjoy!

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