When good ideas go bad

Awhile back I made those pistachio macaroons and ended up with a large bowl of left over chocolate ganache. As tempting as it was to just get a spoon and deal with that ganache in a simple way (either by myself, or with child help), I just couldn't do it. I needed to find another way to use that chocolate.

Which is where the good idea came in.

I had been keeping open, on my laptop screen, a recipe for a Caramel Banana Cake from Apartment Therapy. I had been wanting to make it, but had wanted to use the cheat method of jarred caramel sauce instead of homemade and kept either forgetting to pick a jar up, or forgetting I had one in the pantry already and made something else with those ripe bananas.

You can see where I'm going with this now, can't you?

Yes, that ganache would be a lovely substitute for the caramel. Afterall, bananas and chocolate do go well together.

My mind was made up. So made up that I overlooked the two 9 inch round pans I was supposed to use and immediately went for my bundt pan, layering the chocolate in between the cake batter. In my mind I saw the image of a tunnel of chocolate in the middle of each slice of banana cake, oozing slightly out of each piece.

Oh yes, it would be beautiful and oh so tasty! In theory.

In reality, yes, it was tasty. And rich. Very rich.

No, the chocolate did not ooze out of each slice. That would have involved the cake being willing to slice nicely. Which it might have done if the cake hadn't decided it was not going to come out of the pan in one piece to begin with.

I can't say this was a total disaster. The cake was enjoyed, no matter how badly it looked. The chocolate did not go to waste, nor did I have to eat it myself or hand it over to my children to inhale. Instead they balanced out the chocolate with some banana.

And I eventually got to enjoy a jar of caramel sauce on ice cream. Mmmmmm.