I have not posted anything with my baking group from ABC in so long; I’m surprised to see I’m still part of it!

Thank you Hanaa for keeping me in the fold and not kicking me out to the curve.

For 2012, the ABC bakers decided to bake from Abigail Johnson Dodge, The Weekend Baker and she was kind enough to pick our inaugural recipe.

She describes this as an “elegant brunch coffee cake” and after making it today, I could not agree more.

I planned to do this cake back in late December in order to have it ready to post in our early January schedule.

Then, life; sort of happened and this fell through the cracks.

It did not help the cause that Tom and the little man ate the bananas I had put aside for it, and I kept forgetting to buy them during December’s stop at market.

I know, excuses, excuses.

But, today as I sat at home nursing a cold and bored out of my mind, I opened the refrigerator to make myself something to eat and saw the black bananas, and decided why not?

We needed a cake for the weekend and I had nothing better to do than cough up a lung.

Let’s bake!

The cake is a combination of a banana cake and the chocolate addition makes it a bit more interesting. It also has an appealing topping made of walnuts and sugar, which gives it a nice crunch. It’s a pretty straightforward recipe and not complicated at all.

The only “oh, oh” moment happen when I was beating the wet ingredients (bananas, sugar, butter, vanilla). The bananas made the batter separate and no matter how much I mixed it up, it never quite came together. I got worried there for a minute, and even thought I was going to have to start again. But laziness won out and I put it on the pan anyways.

Nothing to worry about, the end result was a perfectly great cake. With a smooth taste of banana, with chocolate and not too sweet either. It’s also a great hit around.

You can find the recipe over at Fine Cooking. You can also find the other ABC bakers take on this recipe here.