Chocolate Bottom Banana Cake

I don't know if you've noticed, but I think I have mentioned bananas on here quite a bit. I think all little kids like bananas, and little miss in no exception to that. And we tend to buy our bananas at Produce Junction, because you get a great price per pound. The only problem is that you get many pounds for your price. So we do our best to go through them, but we always wind up baking with the last several.

In looking for yet another fun, new banana recipe, I was intrigued by this one, which I came across completely by accident, while I was looking at some other recipe (though I can't remember what that other one was right now...). Bananas and chocolate? That sounded different, so I was definitely up for it!

My helper was on board to help me mash the bananas, but wasn't really in the mood to do much else. We had just come in from sledding and she didn't have much of an attention span for baking. I mean, she wanted to help, but if you have seen a wired-from-sledding-three-year-old's version of "help," you'll understand that it's probably just as well that I handled most of the measuring and mixing myself this time...

The batter as a little bit thicker than I had expected, which made spreading each layer across the pan a little more work than I had anticipated, and I did opt out of using the chocolate chips mentioned in the recipe, rationalizing that this way the cake could serve as breakfast in a pinch... (just agree with me...). This smelled really good baking. And puffed up beautifully, as well.

We cut into this for snack time today, and it was really cool to see how the layers came out. Looks kinda like waves, doesn't it? I don't think I could have done that on purpose no matter how hard I tried. And of course I brought some to the gym for one of my favorite non-family taste testers to try. She loved it, and so did we. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Chocolate Bottom Banana Cake

(from Tammy's Recipes)

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups mashed banana (about 3 bananas)

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9" x 13" baking pan.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the egg, vanilla and mashed bananas, mixing thoroughly.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and mix well.

Divide batter in half. Add the cocoa powder to one half of the batter. Spread the chocolate batter in the bottom of the prepared pan. Spoon the remaining half of the batter on top of the chocolate batter. You can gently swirl the batters together with a knife if you want. Sprinkle chocolate chips on the layers of batter.

Bake for 30 minutes or until cake tests done (with toothpick or tester). Allow cake to cool.

Enjoy!