Ooooh. Totally in love with chocolate and bananas all mushed up into a bit of heaven: which conflicts horribly with my attempts to swear off chocolate! My camera's bitten the dust so at the moment I'm a bit short in the "photo of our favourite chocolate cake of the moment" photo, but maybe that can come later? I do have pictures though of our chocolate banana oatmeal cookies and our banana bread chocolate cake to stimulate you and get you softening butter. So read on and turn the oven on!
Banana Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
In light of most schools being nut-free and it being back to school season, I've taken the nuts out of this equation. Feel free to pop them back in if circumstances allow (pecans or walnuts: personally I think it's overload with the nuts, but on the other hand it's added protein). Unlike some chocolate chip cookies, these stay moist and fresh-tasting all day. Gorgeous.
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 large banana (or about half a cup)
1 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup rolled oats (the kind you cook for three minutes to make oatmeal)
chocolate chunks or chips to taste
You know the drill, right? Cream the butter and add the sugar. Blend the sugar, and add the egg and vanilla. Mush that together (spoon or mixer), then add the banana. Now it's getting really wet, right? Add in the dry ingredients (which you've mixed together beforehand, right?). When everything's blended add in the oatmeal then the chocolate. As much chocolate as can be reasonably accomodated in the cookies. Bake for about 12 minutes at 375. Mmmmm
Banana Bread with chocolate icing
for years I've been baking this as straight-up banana bread and then - did I mention I've got a problem with chocolate? - I thought, I'm going to ice this sucker and chocolate it up a bit! So make it as straight up banana bread (in which case you need to bake it for longer and, in the case of my loving oven, tent it against scorching) or put it in two pans and bake for 20 minutes or so, cool and ice. Either way it's the absolute best banana bread in the world. Seriously.
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mashed bananas (two big or about 3 small, should be a cup though)
1/2 cup yogurt (or sour cream or 1/3 cup keffir: I usually use plain no sugar no gelatin yogurt)
Cream the butter and add the sugar. Mix that til you're bored. Get it out of your system now, instead of at the flour stage: overmixing flour in anything but bread makes it tough and rubbery. So mix the butter-sugar well instead if you're that way inclined. Add eggs, mix well. Stir the dry ingredients together and add to the wet. Add banana-mush, yogurt and vanilla. Stir well. Pour into buttered and lightly sugared loaf pan or two cake pans (hmmm ... heart shaped pans would be nice). Bake about an hour for the loaf, 20 minutes for the pans.
Chocolate icing (for any cake at all).
1/2 cup butter (very soft)
3/4 cup sifted icing sugar (if you don't sift, you get lumps, see lumpy icing in the photo where I got all lazy and instantly regretted it)
1/4 cup cocoa (sifted, see above)
Stir up the butter till it's creamy add icing sugar and cocoa and mush it all up! Ice the cake (which you've let cool for half an hour at least: it tastes incredible slightly warm with the icing, on the other hand it's hard to ice a warm cake without the icing slithering down onto the cake plate). Enjoy!
Chocolate and banana pecan crumble cake (adapted from UK Country Living)
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 butter cup
1 cup good dark chocolate
2 small bananas
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
For the crumble topping
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Butter two cake pans. Melt the butter, chocolate, sugar together and then add the smushed bananas. Next add the eggs and stir the bananas in and mix well. Next fold in the dry ingredients. Pour half into the pan. Crazy-easy cake! Next, make the crumble: just chop nuts, mix with sugar and add in chocolate chips. Put half the crumble on top of the half the batter in the pan, then the rest of the batter, then the rest of the crumble. Pop it in the oven for about 40 minutes (or 20 if your stove is a maniacal 63 year old General Motors model like mine). Let cool about 15 before turning out (some of the crumble will fall off, pile it back on!).
