This recipe makes a delicious snack cake that is similar to banana bread. You can use apple juice in place of the rum and pecans in place of the walnuts.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 45 mins |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 1 to 8 – inch square pan |
Ingredients
- ½ cup raisins
- 1 ½ tablespoons dark rum
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup butter, softened
- ¾ cup brown sugar, packed
- ½ cup mashed ripe banana
- 3 tablespoons low-fat buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 egg whites
- ⅓ cup chopped walnuts
- 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease an 8×8 inch baking pan. Place the raisins and rum in a microwave-safe bowl. Place in the microwave and cook on High for 1 minute. Set aside until needed.
- Stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a mixing bowl. In another mixing bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the banana, buttermilk, vanilla, and egg whites until well blended. Gradually add the flour mixture, beating just until combined. Stir in the raisin mixture and walnuts. Spread the batter into the prepared pan
- Bake in preheated oven until the top is golden, about 30 minutes. Cool in the pan 10 minutes before cutting into bars and transferring to a rack to cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 140 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 23 g |
| Cholesterol | 8 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 121 mg |
| Sugars | 15 g |
| Fat | 5 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
It seemed pretty dry to me. I think it needs more banana to help give it some bouncy and moist texture. Perhaps adding some milk or cream would help as well.
This recipe is amazing and so easy to make – I also added the Rum I got from Bermuda which gave it a spicy flavor. Highly recommend it – even my mom who does not like sweet bread loved it. I used craisins instead of raisins.
Wonderful. Moist, flavorful and easy to make. We used apple juice with a few drops of rum flavoring to soak the raisins and only change from the recipe was to use one whole egg instead of the egg whites. Banana bars don’t get better than this, for me.
I’m only giving this recipe 5 stars for one reason – It should make more!! Seriously – if I could rate it a “10” I would! These are so moist and the banana flavor is great! My bananas were very ripe and I think that helps to impart more great banana flavor. I didn’t use raisins as I’m not a huge fan of them, but instead used chocolate chips. I didn’t put the choc.chips in the microwave with the rum though, as I did not want them to melt. Instead I heated the rum for 10 seconds, let cool a bit, then added 1/2 c. chocolate chips. Delicious!!
It tasted just like regular banana cake or bars to me. I didn’t use the raisins, since I don’t like them. I couldn’t taste any rum flavor, and I used Myer’s Dark Rum. It was good regardless. 🙂
These were fantastic! Very moist, kept for days. I will be making this instead of banana bread from now on!
This ia a nice little snacking cake. I think it does have a good amount of flavor–some cinnamon might be nice, but overall the banana flavor comes through. It’s moist but crisp on the edges–just how I like it. Very easy and quick to make, as well. I like the raisins in this. I don’t have walnuts (bf does not like them) and didn’t want to sub any other nuts, so I just left them out. Very nice, thank you for the recipe!
I followed the suggestions of the other two reviewers and used a full cup of rum and a full cup of banana. Unfortunately and confusingly, these squares had almost no taste at all. The texture, however, was amazing. Exactly what a banana recipe should feel like in your mouth. I’m going to try this again with even more bananas, maybe no rum so that there’s no competition for taste, and see if it’s more flavorful.
Very cool name! There’s nothing better than saying “I’m hungry. Where are the monkey bars?” Loved the raisins, used half whole wheat flour, the banana part was great (I’d maybe add a full banana next time), but my walnuts were a bit stale – use FRESH walnuts!! My inner child is screaming that chocolate chips in here too would truly make them ‘monkey’ bars 🙂
I used about 1/2 cup of rum in the batter instead of the tablespoon. There was a light rum flavor to the bread afterwards but still nothing terribly strong. I made this into bread instead of bars, and it was a decent loaf that got eaten quickly by the roommates.