Frosted Cocoa Banana Cake

Happy 100th Birthday, Prince Rupert!

A hundred years old certainly isn’t very old for a city compared to a lot of places in this world! This week we were blasted with cold weather and freezing rain! Not the best weather to celebrate with parades and other community gatherings.

We carefully drove across the city this morning to drop Cam off at friend’s where he’s helping with basement suite renovations. Even I got in on the fun (?) yesterday, mudding and taping all the new drywall. I’m not much of a parade fan so I happily gave it a miss with the internal excuse of bad weather.

Instead we spent the day at home, working on small crafty projects, folding laundry, building marble runs and looking through books. We had every intention of going to the city birthday gathering with friends later in the evening but that also fell by the wayside when I lost track of time and forgot about supper until 6pm. I chose one of my quick suppers from my meal plan (Persian Rice) and decided to make a cake of our own to commemorate Prince Rupert’s centennial.

Originally from the Hollyhock cookbook, this cake’s description wasn’t blowing my socks off. I decided to go for it anyway because it looked quick and easy… and well, it was chocolate, which I love. Turns out this cake has the perfect level of bananaosity to it. It was moist and delicious but not too rich. Here’s what I did:

Cocoa Banana Cake

• 2/3 cup Milk (I used almond)
• 1 tbsp Vinegar
• 1 cup softened Butter
• 1 1/3 cup Demerara Sugar
• 2 Eggs, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups Banana, pureed
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 cup Cocoa
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• Optional chopped walnuts can be folded in at the end

1. Preheat oven to 350′ and oil a bundt pan really well.
2. In a measuring cup, combine milk and vinegar and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add the milk mixture, eggs, banana puree and vanilla and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet. Don’t overmix! It should be a bit lumpy.
5. Spoon batter into the well oiled bundt pan.
6. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a knife comes out clean.
7. Cool ten minutes and then invert onto a serving plate or cooling rack. When cake is cooled completely ice it with the Cocoa Banana Frosting.

Cocoa Banana Frosting

• 1/2 cup Cocoa
• 1/4 cup melted Butter
• 1/4 cup Banana, pureed
• 2 tbsp + Milk (the recipe calls for 2 tbsp but I needed much more to bring this icing together where it was still thick and smooth. Use your eyes!)
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 3 cups Icing Sugar

1. In a medium bowl or food processor, whisk or mix together the cocoa, butter, banana, milk and vanilla. While whisking add the icing sugar until combined and smooth.