Go bananas! Banana and walnut cake with peanut butter frosting

Getting into the details of how this cake was born might get too confusing even for the most seasoned of the readers so suffice to say it involves a Sunday lunch, drag queen bingo, someone getting fired and a couple of bottles of wine. Oh, and a Leprechaun. 

The idea for the frosting on the other hand was inspired by Klaus K American Grill's Christmas lunch. 

Yummeee!

Banana and walnut cake:

3 really ripe bananas

the juice of 1/2 lemon

5 dl all purpose flour

1,5 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1,5 tso ground cardamom

125 g butter, at room temperature

2 dl sugar (or 1 dl of brown sugar + 1 dl regular)

3 eggs

1,5 tsp vanilla essence (or vanilla sugar)

2 dl buttermilk (or 1 dl Greek yogurt + 1 dl milk)

100 g walnuts, roughly chopped

Peanut butter frosting:

200 g cream cheese

3 tbsp peanut butter (non-sweetened kind)

1 tbsp lemon juice

4 tbsp icing sugar

For decorating: dried banana or walnuts (optional)

Mash the bananas, combine with lemon juice and set aside. Combine the dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar and then add eggs. Beat in mashed bananas and then, altering, buttermilk and flour mixture. Finally fold in walnuts.

Pour into a loaf tin either buttered and sprinkled with breadcrumbs OR lined with parchment. Bake at 180-190 (depends on the oven!)  for about an hour. Halfway through cover the cake with tin foil to stop it from getting too brown. 

Let cool in the tin (until the next day if you have the will power as much like carrot cake, this only gets better!) remove and cover with frosting.

For the frosting whisk all the ingredients together.

PS. We made this for National Peanut Butter Day. But the recipe will come in equally handy on National Banana Bread Day on February 23rd, too! Or August 27th, which marks the national Banana Lover's Day. Oh, the things they come up with in America...!

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ANYONE FOR SECONDS?