Banana cake

I did something awesome today. 

The restaurant was crazy busy yesterday and we ran out of almost everything, so I had a lot of things to make this morning. It's also the end of our week in terms of grocery shopping, so the stocks were low in most categories. 

I looked in the fridge this morning to decide what soups to make today and the only veggie we had enough of for a soup were red bell peppers. So I made roasted red bell pepper soup and threw some butternut squash I found in the freezer. (Thanks, Minimalist Baker! You came up in my google search in the wee hours of this morning and saved my day.) For the second soup, I put hard cider in a pot with cheddar cheese, some thyme, a bay leaf infusion, leftover potato leek soup, and an apple I found. 

Those were pretty awesome soups, as it turned out, but the really cool thing was this new cake: 

I didn't have a lot of time this morning, but I did have a yellow cake mix and some bananas...

Here's what ya do: 

Puree a couple of bananas with a little water (I used 2 medium bananas and 1/2 C. water, and ended up with 1 1/2 C. banana puree). 

Throw that puree in a bowl/mixer with: yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding mix, 1/4 C. oil (I used canola), & 3 eggs.

If you're at high elevation like I am, you'll probably want to throw another 1/4 C. flour in there too. 

Mix for about 2 minutes, medium speed. 

Bake your cakes: 30-35 minutes at 350, for my oven. Your measurements may vary. 

*I use the parchment paper method for cakes: cut a round of parchment paper to fit in the bottom of the cake pan, no-stick-spray the bejeebus out of it, and pour the batter in.

I did this one in two 9-inch layers. That gave me a rather squat cake, so if you want a taller cake either increase the recipe or use narrower pans (is 'narrower' the right word? I don't know).

Aaaaand my cakes fell anyway, so I ended up putting a layer of banana slices in the middle of the cake to bolster the middle... which I will be doing from now on because that was AMAZING. 

Oh, chocolate sour cream frosting is the bomb on this cake. I put that in the middle. I also used up the last of my chocolate cream cheese frosting doing the outside and top of the cake. Because yum. 

 I'd show you a picture, but... uh, it was delicious.