Currently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter

What does one do when the intended last recipe from this book fails miserably and there’s a pile of overripe bananas sitting on the counter? Try one last recipe that hopefully includes a lot of bananas!

This basic cake starts out by creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs. In the meantime, a couple of bananas are pureed in the food processor, strained and mixed with sour cream. Does it surprise you that I skipped the straining part? My bananas looked smooth enough, and I don’t think it hurt the finished product. Anyway, you alternately add the dry and wet ingredients to the batter and then stir in some miniature chocolate chips. The cake gets baked in a bundt pan for about an hour.

I had no problems with this recipe. In fact, it didn’t even stick to my sorely scratched, nonstick bundt pan. The cake was tender with just the right amount of chocolate and banana flavor. It quickly became a breakfast favorite with some guests I had staying at the house.

So that’s it for Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More. I have mixed feelings about this book. There were a couple of really good recipes, such as the lemon pound cake and the rustic walnut horns, but most of them were just so-so. I haven’t baked much out of Walter’s other books, but I do have her cookie cookbook that will probably show up here sooner or later.