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This month at Sourdough Surprises the challenge was cake that incorporated sourdough starter.  The sourdough isn’t the sole leavening agent, as it is in breads, but in some recipes is the acidic component that activates baking soda.

There are a surprising number of cake recipes that use starter.  Depending on starter feeding schedule and storage method, though, and how often they bake, some people must have a lot more starter that needs used up or discarded than I do.

At first I was planning on making a chocolate cake of some sort but I decided after the fudge I made over Spring Break and Girl Scout cookies, we really didn’t need a chocolate cake around here.

I did have two aging bananas, and I like having a quick bread already made for breakfast, however, so C Mom Cook’s Banana Cake was a perfect fit.

I did not make the glaze.  It was for breakfast, after all.  I baked it last night and we had it for breakfast this morning.  I usually make banana bread in a loaf pan, but since this challenge is cake, and who makes cake in a loaf pan, I used my Bundt pan.  It’s prettier, anyway.

First of all, understand that my family loves banana bread, and I like it well enough, but there are many other quick breads I like better.  Banana bread rarely wows me.

So this was about an average banana bread.  Either the starter or the yogurt, or probably both, added an interesting tang to it.  I wish I had added some chopped up nuts.  Chopped nuts never hurt anything.

I realized in looking at the original recipe on C Mom Cook just now that I used baking powder instead of the baking soda it calls for.  That may be why my banana cake didn’t rise as high as I expected, or as high as hers.  But it could just be a difference in pan size.

I prefer very moist banana bread, so I put in 1/2 cup oil instead of 1/4.  I wouldn’t call this an exceptionally moist banana bread (er, cake) but it isn’t bad.  It only took 40 minutes to bake, but my oven runs a little hot.