Bananas and Chocolate? Sweet!: Chocolate Banana Swirl Cake

I recently bought an inexpensive used copy of Fine Cooking Cakes & Cupcakes and I decided to try a Chocolate Banana Swirl Cake recipe from Abigail Dodge when I found myself with some ripe bananas on hand. It's a marble Bundt cake with banana batter swirled with chocolate-banana batter, coated with chopped walnuts.

To make the batter you beat softened butter with sugar, ripe bananas, and vanilla; add eggs; and alternately add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) and butternilk. You add melted and cooled bittersweet chocolate to half of the batter. Then you add scoops of alternating banana and banana-chocolate batter to a Bundt pan that has been buttered and coated with chopped walnuts and sugar; swirl the batters together; and bake.

I was relieved that the cake came out from the pan intact in one piece. I liked this cake a lot. The texture was firm but not dry and I really appreciated the extra texture and flavor from the walnut and sugar coating on the pan; I had used sanding sugar instead of granulated sugar for the coating to get a little extra crunch. This cake was quite sweet, but I don't mind when banana cakes are sweet and this one was delicious. I would have loved this even if it was a straight banana cake, but the chocolate-banana portion was also terrific. I would recommend this cake and make it again.

Recipe: "Chocolate Banana Swirl Cake" by Abigail Dodge from Fine Cooking Cakes & Cupcakes, available here at Fine Cooking.