Banana Chocolate Almond Butter Cake

Senioritis is definitely getting the better of me.  I foresee a lot of baking in my future.  Or at least, I foresee a lot of baking in my future once I run out and get more sugar, because right now my house is running dangerously low on sugar.  It's terrible, I know.  But anyway, I started the procrastination-via-baking cycle tonight with some delicious Banana Chocolate Almond-Butter cupcakes.  And this blog posting is special too, because (drum roll...) it's my first post with pictures! Yay!  I can't guarantee the quality, and don't get your hopes up about pictures in the future (there's a high probability I'll resort to laziness again). But, for this post, there are pictures!!  And yes, I know I went back and added pictures to my lasagna posting.... but this is the first time I'm writing a post and putting pictures in at the same time.  Don't take my moment away from me.  But back to the cupcakes!!!

I found the recipe here from Namely Marly, a vegan food blog.  She didn't use the word "banana" in her title for the cake, but because every recipe which uses bananas always ends up tasting like banana bread to me (not that that's a bad thing, it's just a fact) I felt the need to add "banana" to my title.  Not that it matters.  I just thought you should know.

I halved the recipe, partially due to the current sugar famine situation, and partially because I didn't want to have a huge amount of cupcakes sitting around willing me to eat them.  I also, like I said, made cupcakes instead of normal cake like Marly does.  For some reason I always tend to make cupcakes instead of cake.  I don't remember the last time I made a cake, actually.  Cupcakes are just so much more friendly.  You can grab a cupcake on the go and carry it around, or bring some cupcakes to share with friends.  Normal cake requires knives to cut it, and forks and plates to eat it.  That just seems like a huge hassle.  Also, by definition anything which is smaller is automatically cuter and better.  So if cupcakes are smaller than normal cakes, and smaller things are cuter and better than larger things, then cupcakes must be better than normal cakes.  Ha! I knew my logic class would come in handy.

                  So much cuter and more accessible than a normal cake.

But I digress. Again. On to the recipe!!  I'll give the whole recipe here, but like I said I halved it.  I ended up with 12 cupcakes and 1 loaf (had to use up the extra batter), but I assume the whole recipe would either give you a whole cake or about 30 cupcakes.

Please ignore the fact that there are 11 cupcakes here when I said that I made 12.  I only have so much self-restraint.  Thank you.

Cake ingredients

• 3 cups flour (2 cups of regular and 1 C whole wheat if you have it)
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup almond butter
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil (I did a little over 1/4 C applesauce and the rest oil)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 large banana, (mashed)
• 1 cup soy buttermilk (soy milk combined with 2 teaspoons of vinegar)
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Chocolate Frosting

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1/2 cup margarine (I used Smart Balance)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 – 3 tablespoon soy milk

• Shaved chocolate (optional)
• Chopped almonds (optional)

Cake Directions:
Heat your oven to 375F.
Spray a 9 X 13 cake pan (or a cupcake pan) with baking spray
In a medium bowl, stir together dry ingredients.
In a small bowl combine soy milk with vinegar and let set for a bit. In a separate bowl blend together peanut butter, oil, vanilla, mashed bananas, and then add soy buttermilk until smooth.  Note- make sure you really mash up the banana so you don't get freaky banana chunks in your cake.
Add the moist ingredients to the flour mixture and stir together well.
Finally, add chocolate chips and give the batter a couple more stirs to incorporate them.
If you're making a cake, put the batter in the cake pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
If you're making cupcakes, fill the cupcake tins about 3/4 full and bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Let cool completely then ice with Chocolate Frosting

Frosting:
Combine cocoa and margarine in a medium bowl and stir until well mixed. Add the powdered sugar, then add the teaspoon of vanilla and stir some more. Finally, add soy milk one tablespoon at a time until you get a desired consistency. Top with shaved chocolate and chopped almonds if you want (I just used some slivered almonds I had lying around to make them look all nice and fancy).


As I was saying before, the recipe is good but is definitely very banana-y.  I feel a little weird calling this cake, because it's more like a cross between cake and muffin.  I seem to have a kind of theme and variations going on with banana bread, though, so this is good to add to my arsenal of banana-something recipes.  It was really nice and moist, with just a hint of the almond butter (I think peanut butter would be really good too).  The chocolate frosting on top also really worked well with the cake (muffin?).  If I call this a muffin instead of cake, does it mean that I can have this for breakfast tomorrow? I'll have to sleep on it.  Enough rambling for tonight.