SOMEONE PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME. Where in the U.S. Constitution does it require that any dessert involving bananas must include vanilla wafers?

Bananas do not usually get too ripe at the RBT house, as we all prefer them before they get brown and spotty. And I eat one for breakfast just about every day, especially before a morning run or race. But things have been a bit nuts around here recently, and so it was that I found five rapidly aging bananas in the kitchen this weekend.

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My standard approach is to make banana bread, but I wanted to try something new. Plus I needed a dessert for our D&D session. So I looked around for a banana pudding-style cake recipe in our cookbooks at home and on the Internet. What I found did not impress me.

The generic recipes (like Kraft Foods) called for instant banana pudding mix, or instant vanilla pudding with sliced bananas. Several promising leads to “Southern Banana Pudding” were nothing more than the instant stuff with a little bourbon added. A couple non-instant recipes were full of sugar and fat, but called for only a single banana – pretty odd for recipes with “banana” in their titles. And every recipe – I mean every recipe – called for a layer, crust, or topping of those d*mn wafers. Mmmm…vanilla-scented sawdust.

I checked supposedly upscale sites like Food Network and Martha Stewart. I consulted The Cake Mix Doctor, with which my wife has produced some real winners like her carrot cake and chocolate chip cake. Wafers, wafers everywhere. In desperation I began checking vegan recipes, which called for – wait for it! – vegan vanilla wafers. Arrgh!!!

Finally I came across a recipe thankfully omitting the wafers. And it called for three ripe bananas. I upped that to four and made a few other tweaks. Here is the result. I used a caramel drizzle in place of the cream cheese frosting, to lower the fat and better taste the bananas. This was a hit.

RBT’s Un-Wafer Banana Cake

Dry ingredients: 1 cup white whole-wheat flour, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup lowfat milk
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
4 medium-sized ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the dry ingredients. Beat the egg and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, coconut oil, bananas, and milk. Fold in the dry ingredients until moistened. Pour into a cake pan (I used a Bundt pan for a little more elegance) and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Cake is done when cake tester comes out clean. Turn out of pan and cool on rack. The cake should still be very moist inside.

When cool, drizzle with your favorite caramel sauce (here’s the one I made) and top with powdered sugar.

Enjoy with whipped cream, ice cream, whipped coconut cream (or all of them), and fruit.