Peanut Butter Coffee Cake

                                       from Crazy Vegan Mom


My absolute favorite part of this recipe is that there's a banana inexplicably in it. And I don't mean, "Oh, THAT'S kind of a strange idea, using a banana in this recipe." I mean, "There's a banana in this recipe, BUT IT NEVER SAYS WHAT TO DO WITH IT!"

Which of course made me start day-dreaming while I was putting this together. And I thought to myself, Well, maybe Crazy Vegan Mom really IS kind of crazy, and she's decided to be a healthful deviant and start listing out unnecessary fruit in recipes in an attempt to get people eating better--that way they'll BUY the ingredient and, after suddenly realizing that the recipe never explains what to actually DO with it, they'll instead chow down on it so as not to make it go to waste. Which would be really kind of brilliant.

And THEN I was like, Even better: Maybe Crazy Vegan Mom is like this awesome radical sex-promoting feminist, and she was like, I will start putting random bananas in recipes because, well, if you've got a banana in your hand and 30 minutes of baking time to kill, um... you get my drift. And that would be even MORE super-brilliant.

By the time I'd finished crafting all these tales in my head, I gave in to the reality of the situation, which was that the banana probably just got left out of the directions.

Anticlimactic.

But not surprising, seeing as everything in my head seems to be WAY more crazy-ass weird than in the real world.

Needless to say, I've added banana-directions below.

Banana-ramble now complete, let us discuss this recipe:

Holy moly mother of god, this really is a damn good coffee cake recipe. And I was highly highly skeptical. Not for any real reason other than that the batter seriously freaked me out by having a total Blob moment and almost completely swallowing up my electric mixer in a way that seriously had me concerned that this would happen:



That in turn got me humming the theme song of the 1958 Steve McQueen version of The Blob while I used my electric mixer, which seriously is like THE best horror movie theme-song ever.

You MUST listen to it if you've never heard--it will get stuck in your head the rest of the day: CLICK TO DO IT!

I am A.D.D. recipe-style today. My apologies.

Anyways, seriously: despite the banana weirdness, and despite the Blob, this was seriously fantastic coffee cake. Dense, moist, and awesomely peanut-buttery. I really highly recommend this recipe.

Two bananas up to Crazy Vegan Mom!

INGREDIENTS:

Topping:


• 1/2 c. packed light-brown sugar


• 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour


• 1/4 c peanut butter


• 3 T. margarine


Cake:


• 2 1/4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour


• 1 c. packed brown sugar


• 2 t. baking powder


• 1/2 t. baking soda


• 1/4 t. salt


• 1 c. soy milk


• 1/2 c. peanut butter


• 1 ripe banana, mashed


• 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) margarine

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375-F. Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

For the topping, mix the brown sugar and flour. With a pastry knife, a fork, or your fingers, cut in the peanut butter and margarine until crumbly; set aside.

For the cake, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the soy milk, banana, peanut butter and margarine. Beat until smooth, about 3 minutes with an electric mixer. Pour into the baking pan and sprinkle with the topping.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes 12 -16 servings

(Recipe from Crazy Vegan Mom)