Tuesdays with Dorie

This is the first of my recipes for Tuesdays with Dorie, a baking group wherein we bake a recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan each week, then blog about it. (I can't tell you how much I am in love with this book, I keep calling it my food porn - I mean LOOK at the cover!!)

Dorie won a James Beard award for this book last year as well - it has to be good.

This week the recipe that was chosen was Black and White Banana Loaf. It's an unusual marbled cake baked in a loaf pan. The base is a banana/rum cake that is half-flavored with melted bittersweet chocolate for the marbled effect.



I had fun making this cake. I was very careful and patient with my technique, and felt like at each stage it looked the way that Dorie described. (so often I am NOT patient - I don't cream for as long as I should, don't add my eggs to the batter one by one...) I didn't hurry my oven and put the cake in before it should (my oven runs hot and it takes way longer to preheat to the correct temperature than the little beeper would have you believe).

Look at that beauuuuutiful marbling! ;)



That being said, I made two changes to the recipe-

1. I left out the lemon juice and zest from the banana/rum mixture. The idea of the lemon mixing with the chocolate just ooged me out entirely. (plus I didn't have a lemon)
   
2. In reading some of the early reviews of the recipe on the website, it seemed several people had problems with the cake setting up and excess banana seemed to be the issue. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 bananas (I wish a volume measurement had been given like my banana bread recipe, which calls 1 1/4 cups) so my frozen banana being LARGE, I opted for just the one mashed banana and decided I would check out the consistency when I was done. It was good, not too thin!

I had part trepidation and part fascination with this cake because of the unusual flavor profile. I didn't really ever taste the banana or rum, and the chocolate is very mild. It does make for a very pretty cake when cut, and I wouldn't hesitate to give it to friends as a gift or take to a potluck. The flavor however, just doesn't wow me enough for me to make this again just for us to eat.