Banana Cake, Humble Pie

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Our friends James and Lyndie invited us over for dinner this evening, and we brought dessert. I was pretty excited about it, since dessert seems to be my forte lately...or so I thought.

We had some bananas that were getting extremely ripe, so I thought I'd make some banana bread. I poked around online, but the only recipe I saw that called for the number of bananas we had was a banana pound cake. It received hundreds of great reviews, so I thought I'd give it a try. And looking back now, I can honestly say...

I WILL NEVER MAKE THIS AGAIN.

Preparation went smoothly enough: I used the new stand mixer I got for my birthday(!), and the batter looked great. The problem was that there was just too much of it for my bundt pan (which is what the recipe recommended using). I poured in as much batter as I could without overloading the pan and slid it into the oven. After five minutes or so, I opened the door to check on it, and there was batter everywhere, including on the burner, which caused the whole kitchen to fill with smoke. I quickly slid a baking sheet underneath, grabbed the grill spatula, and started scraping charred batter off of the burner and the oven floor, but otherwise there was really nothing I could do since the baking process had already started. This picture was taken after one hour.


As you can see, batter continued to spill out of the pan for a very long time. What was even weirder than the excessive spillage was that while the top was dark brown, the batter just underneath was still really jiggly. Also, the recipe said it would take 1 hour and 20 minutes to finish, and it was definitely closer to 2 hours before this nightmare was over. I seriously thought about writing to the person who posted this recipe and ripping them a new one, then quickly decided against it. (I kept imagining how I might feel if someone wrote a scathing review for one of my recipes...) So frustrating, though...I followed the recipe almost exactly; the only part where I strayed was in using chocolate chips instead of chopped pecans because I was pretty sure someone in our group had a nut allergy.

My only consolation is that the cake tasted really good. If I do ever make this again (doubtful at this point), it will be in muffin pans or a 9x13 or multiple loaf pans...anything but a bundt. Oy vey.

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