One morning, at the suggestion of my mom, I decided to quickly throw together a loaf of banana bread to send to Brother John in Seattle (Funnily, my brother’s middle name really is John.) There really isn’t too much to tell. Naturally, the recipe came from The New Best Recipe, with one slight tweak, which was that I added to the top, prior to baking, for the purpose of creating a sugary, crispy crusty component, a whole bunch of brown sugar and some extra toasted walnuts. The recipe was pretty straightforward. It did include plain yogurt, which I had never used in banana bread before. A very snappy baking delight. But I actually don’t know just how delightful, as I’ve not yet heard how it was from dear Caleb. Soon, though, we shall make a determination as to its status… will it be on the menu?? We’ll just have to wait and see.

I have now made this cake twice, once for my mother’s book club, and once for the book club of a friend of hers, who hired me to cook for one of their gatherings, and it has worked nearly perfectly both times— it will definitely be on the Red Kettle menu. The recipe comes from, that’s right, the AMAZING New Best Recipe cookbook. This was my first time making a non-cheesecake cake using a springform pan, which we bought specially for it, for to try to remove it from a regular cake pan would be rawther difficult. My only hurtle came when I accidentally bought, for the second cake, unsweetened baking chocolate, rather than bittersweet. Luckily, I tasted a tiny piece of the chocolate I was chopping, and upon gagging discovered my mistake, at which time I promptly returned to the grocery store to make things right.

On both occasions, the cake was a hit. I strongly recommend it to all who enjoy chocolate. Simple and scrumptious.