Today I am having a Barefoot Contessa cooking party with my friends Lauren and Liat. Lauren and I had talked about doing this for a while because we are both huge Ina Garten fans and my mom recently got me her new cookbook, How Easy is That? We picked three recipes to make for an early dinner tonight. It was hard to pick but we ended up choosing the ones that just made our mouth water looking at the pictures in the book, and despite the lack of variety in the meal (lots of cheese!) it's going to be so delicous. This morning I made our dessert: the Barefoot Contessa's old-fashioned banana cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake calls for 3 ripe bananas, 3/4c sugar, 1/2c packed light brown sugar, 1/2c vegetable oil, 2 eggs at room temp, 1/2c sour cream, 1tsp vanilla extract, 1 grated zest of orange (which I didn't include, so I'm hoping for the best), 2c flour, 1tsp baking soda, 1/2tsp kosher salt and 1/2c chopped walnuts. Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together. Mix the sugar, brown sugar and bananas in a mixer on low until combined, then add the oil, eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and orange zest. Mix on low until smooth. Finally add the sifted flour mixture and mix until just combined. Stir in chopped walnuts, and then bake for 40-50 minutes at 350 degrees. After baking, let cool in pan for 15 minutes and then take out and cool on a cooling rack.
The cream cheese icing calls for 2 1/2c of confectioners sugar (sifted), 6 tbsp butter (room temp), 6 oz cream cheese (room temp) mixed together with a mixer on low speed. Totally decadent and unbelievably delicious. And I have to say, the cake turned out astoundingly like the one in the beautiful photograph in the cookbook.
