supersnazzy versus plain jane

i decided on tuesday afternoon that i'd had enough of studio and classes (i have this feeling that i'm supposed to go to studio every day, even though it's not true), and skipped 11.012 in favor of taking care of my shriveled bananas. i poked one of the clementines that was on top of them, and surmised that since they were quite squishy - in that way that the peel is still tough but you just know it's squishy inside - i should skip peeling them for fear of finding them completely greenish black inside.

anyway, this is all just a very convoluted and longhand way of saying that i stayed home and baked a (1) supersnazzy banana cake and a (2) plain jane banana bread with my seven shriveled bananas.

i had really wanted to make a layer cake - something elaborate to relax myself - but i had these bananas that were begging to be used and didn't really want to go all the way to star just for a cake i was going to sacrifice. there's no reason, i concluded, why i couldn't make my layer cake out of the banana bread (which is not really bread, anyway). consequently, the banana bread batter got scraped into a jelly roll pan and a 9x13 pan - the jelly roll bread for the layer cake, and the 9x13 pan for those not adventurous enough to eat the layer cake. of course, the 9x13 pan of banana bread was also a contingency plan, in the case that the layer cake was a disaster.

the idea for the banana layer cake - with thin layers because when you're in the mood for making layer cakes it must be thin layers - comes from a photo i saw in my sister's most recent issue of food & wine, in which there is a round banana cake layered with what i believe was whipped cream, coconut, and maybe some other stuff. at any rate, it was quite pretty, and as i didn't have any cream, i settled upon some sort of chocolate confection. much as i like chocolate chip banana bread, i seem to be unable to put any in mine.

the chocolate confection was, at first, just chocolate and butter. but chocolate and butter seemed to be a pretty one-dimensional combination. there was the chocolate for, well, chocolate, and butter for melt-in-your-mouth-could-only-be-butter texture, but nothing else, really. the chocolate was just chocolate chips, so we wouldn't be getting a particularly exciting chocolate taste - not that you would really need sophisticated chocolate for a banana cake. the easy fix, after scouting out the pantry, was cocoa powder (sifted in the lazy method with my left hand) and a can of coconut milk leftover from someone's menu back in mid-february. both cut the sweetness of the chocolate rather nicely, with the cocoa adding some punch to the chocolate factor.

the end result: 1/2" thick layers of cake, spread with chocolate "ganache," then scattered with thinly-sliced banana.

the (other) end result: a regular, rectangular banana bread. the nice thing about banana bread is that you really have to overbake it for a long time before you ruin it.

the end result in the morning: pans gone, and an uncharacteristically clean table left behind.