Recipe: Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

This is a banana cake with chocolate chips baked in a Bundt pan.  I usually frost it with chocolate frosting, but this time I put icing on it bc it's too hot to have a frosted cake just lying around the house.  The recipe is a variation on a Banana Layer Cake recipe from my jumbo retro cookbook, The Culinary Arts Institute Cookbook.

I've actually never made the original Banana Layer Cake recipe in the book.  Don't know what made me think to edit the recipe.  Anyway, here it is.

• 2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour; I used regular, unsifted flour and it turns out fine
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 3 small or 2 really large bananas)
• 2 Tbsp. milk
• about a cup of chocolate chips

1. Sift flour, baking powder, soda and salt together.
2. Cream shortening with sugar and vanilla until well mixed.
3. Adds eggs one at a time; beat thoroughly after each is added.
4. Combine bananas and milk.
5. Add sifted dry ingredients and milk mixture alternately in small amounts, beating thoroughly after each addition.
6. Pour into greased Bundt pan.
7. Bake in a 300 degree convection oven for 50 minutes.  Generally, if not using a convection oven or using the regular bake setting on a convection oven, convection temperatures are 50 degrees lower.  If not using convection, I'd suggest 350 degrees, but watch it carefully bc I've never baked it that way.

Here it is just out of the oven.  This pan is a bit small so the cake bakes up a little higher than the pan.  You can use a bigger pan if you like.

Turfed out of the pan and set right side up.

In the past, I've frosted it with chocolate frosting and here's what it looks like then.

When I made this a few days ago it was just too hot to have a frosted cake just lying around the house melting away.  So this time I put confectioners' sugar icing on it.  It was kinda hot for icing, too, as you can see from all the icing that was just slipping down the sides.  Kevin suggested putting it in the fridge for a spell to stop the melting.  That seemed to work.  It does taste better at room temperature, i.e., not just out of the fridge.