Banana Cinnamon Maple Cake — Because Some Mornings Deserve a Fresh Start

Spring cleaning. Not the metaphorical kind — the actual, physical, every-curtain-comes-down-and-every-closet-gets-emptied kind that Mamma taught me and her mother taught her and probably some stern Swedish woman in Uppsala taught the whole lineage three hundred years ago. You do it when the ice goes out. That's the rule. The ice is out, so the house gets cleaned.\n\nPaul retreats to his study during spring cleaning because he learned early in our marriage that his organizational instincts and mine are incompatible. He sorts by category; I sort by frequency of use. He keeps things because they might be useful someday; I keep things because they are useful now. We had the Great Bookshelf Argument of 1993 and we resolved it by dividing the house into zones of authority. The kitchen is mine. The study is his. The living room is a demilitarized zone governed by an unwritten treaty.\n\nI found things in the kitchen closet that I'd forgotten I had. A bread pan that was Mamma's mother's — tin, dented, the kind that produces the perfect limpa rye crust because the metal is thin and heats unevenly in exactly the right way. I haven't used it in two years. That stops now.\n\nI also found a jar of lingonberry jam from 2014 that I'm choosing not to think about, and a set of cookie cutters shaped like dala horses that Karin sent from Stockholm when she was still sending things regularly, before the distance got comfortable and the packages stopped. Karin — my younger sister, sixty in January, married to a Swede named Magnus, living in Stockholm since 1994. She went back to the motherland and I stayed in Duluth and we talk every Sunday and pretend we don't miss each other.\n\nThe cleaning took all of Saturday. Paul emerged from his study at five o'clock and surveyed the kitchen with the expression of a man who is about to be asked to take bags to Goodwill and is making peace with his fate. "Looks great," he said. He took the bags to Goodwill.\n\nI rewarded us both with pepparkakor — Swedish ginger cookies. They're traditionally a Christmas cookie, but I make them year-round because I am an adult woman in my own kitchen and I answer to no one, and also because the dough was in the freezer from December and I needed to use it. They're thin and crisp and taste like ginger and cinnamon and cloves, and you eat them with coffee — strong coffee, brewed in the percolator that sits on my counter like a relic from 1974, which it is, because Mamma gave it to me when Paul and I got married and said "this makes real coffee" with a look that suggested drip machines were a personal affront.\n\nPaul had four cookies. I had three. Sven had the one I dropped on the floor, which I absolutely did not drop on purpose.\n\nThe house smells like ginger and clean curtains and whatever that particular smell is when old things are moved and new air gets in. It smells like a fresh start, if you're the kind of person who reads meaning into smells. I might be. Fifty-three years in, I might be exactly that kind of person.

But pepparkakor aren’t the only thing that rewards patience in this kitchen. A few days later, with three bananas going spotty on the counter and the maple syrup Paul brought back from that farm stand still half-full, I made something new — a banana cinnamon maple cake that filled the house with a warmth not so different from the ginger, just softer, sweeter, like the difference between December and the first real morning of spring. Here’s the recipe, exactly as I made it.

Banana Cinnamon Maple Cake

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 14 slices

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup white self raising flour
• 3/4 cup wholemeal self raising flour (whole wheat self rising flour)
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 medium ripe bananas (about 1 1/4 cup mashed)
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Prepare the pan. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan and line with parchment (baking) paper. Set aside.
2. Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl whisk together the flours, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Make a well in the centre.
3. Combine wet and dry. Add the mashed bananas, eggs, maple syrup, butter, milk and vanilla into the centre of the ingredients and lightly mix through until just combined. The batter should be thick and lumpy (do not over mix).
4. Bake. Pour the batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30–35 minutes, or until cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
5. Cool. After about a half an hour, turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 236 kcal | Protein: 4g | Fat: 8g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Unsaturated Fat: 3g | Trans Fat: 0.3g | Carbs: 37g | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 18g | Cholesterol: 45mg | Sodium: 168mg