The baking gods were just not smiling on me last night…..

On any given day at Chez SGCC, you are sure to find not one, not two, but several brown, mottled bananas past their prime sitting on the kitchen counter. Any given day except yesterday, that is. Who knew that my weekend houseguests were fans of overripe bananas? Not me, or else I would have stashed the four that I had been saving for my Classic Banana Bundt Cake safely away. I didn’t even realize that they were gone until I went to bake my cake at 9:00 last night. As you can imagine, I was pretty annoyed. I was also already comfortably clad in my pj’s and wasn’t about to get dressed and go out to the store. Besides, I had been there earlier in the day and already knew that they didn’t have any freckled bananas either. So, faced with this dilemma, I did the only thing any self-respecting food blogger would do. I tweeted ^[1] for help! Within two minutes I had about a dozen helpful suggestions, one of which was to use frozen bananas. And, that’s what I did.

Dorie’s ^[2] Classic Banana Bundt Cake is a just that – a basic banana cake. The recipe calls for two cups of granulated sugar. Okay. Good. Except that I had only had a cup and a half of granulated sugar in my pantry. So my cake also has a half cup of brown sugar in it.

The recipe also calls for a cup of sour cream or plain yogurt. I had neither. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did have a container of sour cream in the fridge, but when I opened it, it was kind of separated and curdled, so I tossed it. I did have some crème fraiche that I was saving for another recipe, though. So I substituted it for the sour cream.

By this time, I had no idea how this cake was going to turn out! But I was past the point of no return. So, I decided to also add a cup of chopped pecans and a little slosh of some lovely banana flavored dark rum that I had picked up in St. Kitts. I figured that even if the cake sucked, the rum would rehabilitate it. I mean, how bad could it be if it had rum in it!

Well, I’ll be dipped in bittersweet chocolate ganache! My Classic Frozen Banana Brown Sugar Creme Fraiche Rum Cake was freakin’ fantabulous! Seriously! It was probably one of the most delicious cakes I’ve ever baked. It was ridiculously moist and dense, with a subtle hint of caramel from the brown sugar. The rum added an extra pop of banana flavor along with a warm, rich undertone. It just goes to show that sometimes what seems like a kitchen disaster, can actually turn out to be a great new discovery! It also goes to show that sometimes less really is more. This cake is not what you might call a “showstopper”. It’s understated and unassuming, but spectacular in its simplicity.

A big thank you goes out to Mary from The Food Librarian ^[3] for selecting our recipe for this week. The recipe can be found on her site. And as always, you can see how the other TWDers did with this banana cake over at the Tuesdays with Dorie ^[4] site.