Celebrating a Milestone with a Cake Wreck

This week, my blog got its 6,000th page view. This is a totally awesome feat considering the humorless garbage I post on here. Of course, the bulk of the people are looking for wedding cakes with butterflies on them, but that's besides the point. Hopefully, those folks are sticking around long enough to read other content and enjoying it enough to visit more often than once. You never know, or can guess, what brings a person to the site unless you directly ask them...and they actually respond.

I'm rambling...let's get our ugly cake on.

A few of you from the beginning probably remember the incident of the exploded Banana Cake Bomb. If not, refresh your memory. The main reason this cake went so horribly wrong the first time was because I used a pan that was WAY too small for the batter. Only after I had coated the inside of my in-law's new convection oven did I read the fine print that said, "Requires a over-sized pan." Armed with this knowledge, (and some over-ripe bananas) I thought it was time for a banana cake redo. And as we've learned, kids, knowing is half the battle.


See, told you so.

 If you haven't noticed, we tend to buy a lot of bananas with the best intentions of eating them. Only later we find the forgotten fruit causing a serious gnat infestation in our fridge a few weeks days later. When looking back over the history of the blog, it is sad how many times I have had to find an emergency preparation method for bananas. Just do a search for the "banana" at the top and you will find a good deal of the posts. The sad thing is, I really do love bananas, I'm just really bad at choosing a healthy snack over Rock-o-licious Peanut Butter Cups. I mean, who would choose a banana over awesome-tastic candy? But I really DO love bananas. See, I had this awesome sushi the other night that had bananas in it.

Dragon-Naner Sushi. om nom!

So, instead of making banana cake or pudding, I went for the cake. I had intended to make a cake when the blog hit 5,000 page views, but I procrastinated. Shame on me. This was probably a jinxed cake from the start. Kind of a, "have you learned nothing about procrastinating" warning message. I mean really, who bakes a cake at a weird, random 6 number anyway? Well, I do. Therefore, we have a wreck.

I started by trying to avoid coating my horrible stove with banana napalm by halving the recipe. My thighs have no need for an over-sized cake anyway. The baking was uneventful, thank God, and I had 2 beautiful rounds of cake resting on my stove. They needed to cool before being iced with cream cheese, so what did I do? What any red-blooded American would: went out for a sushi dinner, ran full speed into Spec's Liquor at 8:56 p.m. and slid my bottle of Jack Daniels over the check-out scanner before the 9 p.m. close like I was stealing home plate, drove home, drank profusely, and passed out watching Iron Chef: Battle Cabbage. What? Isn't that what you do on any given Saturday night?

I woke up the next morning, went to the kitchen to make breakfast, and noticed my two cakes still sitting on the stove top. Hmmm....guess they're cool enough to ice now! Well, the napalm-like material of the bananas thwarted my ability to get them out of the pan in a single piece. They crumbled, stuck, and generally made a huge mess of my counter top. I whipped up some cream cheese icing and started spreading icing on the first layer. Obviously, the icing was too cold as it pulled tons of little crumbs up when I spread the icing. *sigh* Icing a cake when you are hungover does not usually end well. Long story short, I ran out of icing and was too lazy tired to make any more. So here it is America, my "Woo! I've got 6,000 hits on My Blog" banana cake wreck.

Ummm...nom?

Rotten Bananas: Take 2

We buy an awful lot of bananas around this joint, and dammit if they don't go bad before we get a chance to use them. I think I've Banana Breaded out everyone, so I thought perhaps a banana pudding would be a better way to go this time. I know it's almost foolishly simple to list how to make it here, but there are some people who cook so bad, they may need my assistance in getting it right. So, here we go.

Ingredients
1 box of instant vanilla pudding
2-4 medium sized bananas that are as spotty as a Las Vegas Grandma's forearms, chopped into small discs
1 box of Nilla Wafers Cookies
2 cups of cold milk

In a bowl, whisk together the instant pudding and the 2 cups of milk. It will soft set in about 3 to 5 minutes of whisking. When it soft sets, put it in the fridge to chill.

Next find you a good casserole dish or a large bowl to make make the final product in. You can get all Polly Perfect on it and make concentric circles of wafers and thin banana slices if you like. I, on the other hand, just made a bottom crust of cookies, the slapped a good mess of naners on top of those.

Fuck Polly Perfect

Then, you will need to add your chilled pudding. You can do a thin layer, then add some more bananas, wafers and more pudding. Or, you can just dump in your pudding like me. No appreciates your artistry here.

After that, you can add a nice layer of bananas and wafers to the top portion. I like to crumble a few for texture and prettiness. You don't have to. You can be all pirate's treasure on yours and trick your guests into thinking they are just eating plain pudding until they chomp into some mystery item. Is it banana, cookie, or toe nail? Only you will know the truth and you can giggle menacingly at their psychological torture. BWAHAHAHAHA!

On Nom

Why You Shouldn't Crack an Egg on the Mixer While Blending & Other Wordlessness

Crunchy!

Rotten Bananas and Other Wordlessness

When life hands you rotten bananas, sneak into the kitchen and make banana bread.

Miraculous Results from the KC Luncheon Crowd

We dropped the cake of at 9:00amish so that the volunteers could begin plating it before the doors opened at 11:30ish.

After Mass, we drove over to pick up our plates at about 12:20ish. After perusing the dessert table, we made a startling discovery: My banana cake was completely gone already, and most of the carrot cake was, too!

What makes matters even more exciting is that there was still a plethora of desserts to choose from...and the diners chose mine.

Eat your heart out Julie Powell.

Dessert 2: Banana Cake "Bomb" and Other Firey Disasters

Jon’s parents are on weird diets which are high protein and very low carb. Not that Atkin’s nonsense, this was actually derived from a cardiologist at John Hopkins I believe. I don’t know when the event took place, but it appears Jon’s mother threw out any kitchen implements that would lead to the easy preparation of baked goods (i.e. cake pans). I had to scrounge around the back their pantry until I found (quite luckily I might add) 2 of those small disposable, aluminum cake pans.

You know the great thing about using someone else’s kitchen is that you get to use the gadgets they have that you do not. Gadgets like electric mixers, large shiny bowls, and a convection oven. Well, as great as it all is, you still long for some of your own tools. In this case, more than one spatula. How does a person operate with only 1 spatula in the kitchen? I will never know. But I digress.

I start whipping this bad boy up and it calls for, get this, 6 mashed bananas. Thank God the woman had jumbo bowls because my batter quadrupled in size and weight. The electric mixer said “screw this” and the blades would not even turn. I had to stir it by hand.

As I am mixing, I get a call on my cell:

“Come eat lunch with us, we are taking a quick break from the store.” It’s Jon. He’s headed to the BBQ joint near the store and about 10 blocks from the house.

“I can’t I am elbow deep in cake, I have to get it in the oven.”

“How much longer will it take?”

“The recipe says 45 minutes, but I don’t even have it in the pan yet.”

“Just come on. Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t just ‘come on’. Ask your mom if cake batter can rest.”

-Pause-

“She says it can’t, it has to be made right away.”

*Sigh*

Side Note Here: Jon’s parents and I have very distinct philosophical differences in regards to fire safety. I was taught to never leave an unattended candle burning, never walk away from the kitchen when you’re cooking, and always unplug appliances not in use. His parents routinely leave a prayer candle burning in their house, and a fire in the fireplace to keep the place warm when they head to the store in the morning. EEK!

Back to the story:
“I can’t make it. Just bring me something later,” I tell Jon.

“Oh come on, get it in the oven and you will make back in time before it is done,” he assures me.

*My eyes glaze over* I can see the headlines now: “Disgruntled Girlfriend Torches Future In-laws House Due to Delays in Wedding Proposal.” I see his parent’s house engulfed in flames with fiery bananas exploded against the wall like ignited napalm.

Against every fiber of my safety being I acquiesce. I pour the batter into the pan…and notice that we have a problem. The batter is filling the pan up way faster than it is emptying out of the bowl. Shit! :-O

A logical person would have stopped pouring and tried to save the rest of the batter for a smaller side cake. Not me, I can make it fit! Well all the batter fits, to the rim of the pan. I know this is not going to end pretty.

I try to lift the pan to get it into the 350* oven. It almost buckles under its banana sodden goodness. Crap! I slide a cookie sheet underneath the pan to catch the inevitable overflow and support its girth.

I send a text and smash banana into the crevices of my cell: “On my way.” Guess what happened.

Kaboom!