easy banana cake with nutella frosting

As I mentioned Christopher's birthday was this past Friday.  He was post call, so I made some pancakes and eggs for breakfast and Ryann gave him a card.  Don't you just love the one she picked out?  It took her a long time to decide, and Christopher almost ended up with a monkey picking his nose, but then she spotted Thomas WITH STICKERS! and she was sold.  After Chris was all rested up we grabbed some Chinese take-out for dinner and had some of the cake I baked.

Now, usually my mom does the cake making, but she was stuck with my sister in Miami, so, um, I had to make a cake.  I could have just bought a cake, but where is the fun in that?  Or just used a box mix and done a sheet cake, but again, that is kind of lame isn't it (if you do that for your significant other or anybody else it is not lame, I am not judging, just FYI).  I wanted a round frosted cake.  And 'bake and decorate a cake' is one of the things on my never going to get finished 101 in 1001 list.  So I figured why not go for it.

Except, I was scared.  I love baking, but, well, I'm not the best at it.  So I was worried I would completely screw up the recipe.  So I hopped on allrecipes.com and typed 'yellow cake mix' into the ingredients search box, and came across this banana cake recipe.  Perfect!  I had bananas!  I can do this!  I didn't feel like doing just a cream cheese frosting, but figured I love bananas and nutella, surely someone has a nutella frosting recipe.  And The Ginger Snap Girl did (along with a recipe for banana cake, which I'm sure is delicious, but I wanted to use the box mix because it was easy and I'm lazy sometimes...).  So bam.  Easy peasy banana cake with nutella frosting.

Now, my cake isn't exactly pretty, and technically I didn't decorate it, but I freaking made and frosted a cake ok?  Good enough for me.  Just a little word of advice though?  Don't try making the frosting in your family room during nap time.  Because ultimately you will make a giant mess and still wake up your child somehow...

Oh and the cake?  So incredibly tasty.  It was very moist and the perfect amount of banana flavor.  I would never have guessed that it was a box mix.  Chris agreed that it was better than a cake I would have bought at the grocery store.

Banana Cake

Ingredients

• 1 18.25 ounce box yellow cake mix
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Follow the instructions on your box of cake mix (don't include double the water, oil or eggs.  I just put them on the ingredients list so you wouldn't forget you needed them).
2. Mash your bananas with the baking soda, and mix into the cake batter.
3. Divide your batter into two round cake pans and bake for 22-28 minutes.

I used a 9 inch cake pan, and only had one.  So I baked my layers separately, about 24 minutes each layer I believe.  Also, to get my layers even, I used a small digital baking scale.  I weighed my bowl, then weighed again with all of the ingredients mixed and ready to go.  Subtracted the weight of the bowl, divided that number in half.  Then I set the cake pan on the scale while filling it with the appropriate weight of cake batter.  Do you have to get all mathematical and nerdy like that?  Absolutely not.  But again, baking isn't my strong point, so I was leaving as little room for error as possible.

Nutella Frosting
Just pop over to The Ginger Snap Girl's recipe.  I didn't change anything, but I did make an additional half batch just to make sure I had enough frosting, since her cake was a sheet cake and I had no idea if that would matter.  I think I had to add quite a bit of cream to make it a spreadable consistency.  Definitely at least four tablespoons, for my batch probably closer to six or seven.

Enjoy!