Chocolate Banana Cake

Time passes so quickly! Trevor and I have been married for just over a month and already so many things have changed. We are buying a house! It has a few fruit trees so hopefully I'll get to try some new fresh fruit recipes. I have recently been into cooking and trying new recipes, making up my own recipes, and watching cooking shows (I have quite a bit of time on my hands).

This is one of the things that I recently tried. Chocolate Banana Cake. I like banana bread, but I wanted to try something a little different. And this is what I found. The exact site that I found this recipe on is this link: http://southernfood.about.com/od/chocolatecakes/r/bln273.htm. I'll write it down here as well. I even took pictures!

Chocolate Banana Cake:
- 1/2 Cup Margarine (softened)
- 1 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 3 Squares Unsweetened Chocolate (melted and cooled slightly)
- 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 1/2 Cups Mashed, Ripe Bananas
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Cream margarine and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat thoroughly after each. Stir in the cooled melted chocolate. Sift dry ingredients together and add to the batter alternately with the mashed bananas; stir in vanilla. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9-inch layer cake pans. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until cake tests done. Frost with a fluffy white frosting.

Notes: I didn't have brown sugar, so instead I used white sugar and added maple syrup (since I didn't have molasses). I added probably about 2 tablespoons of the syrup. The cake I tried was a little dry, and I think it probably would have been good with a little bit of milk added to it (lite chocolate soy milk would have been wonderful). I also frosted it with a cream cheese frosting (recipe below), but a butter cream frosting would have been great too (especially because the cake is really dense, so a lighter frosting would be yummy). And for the topping, I just did blueberries with sliced almonds to look kind of like a flower.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 1 8 oz package of Cream Cheese
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) of softened Butter or Margarine
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla

Notes: I doubled the recipe and added a little more powdered sugar than it asked for to make it a little thicker. I had a little left over that we have been eating with graham crackers. Yum!