The Drunken Monkey Cake—my third cake from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray. The directions were bothersome again, but I (mostly) made it as directed the first time 😉 This recipe resulted in a cake that was too moist (probably too many bananas), but the cake showed promise, so I committed to re-baking it 🙂

The first thing to go was the showy process of flaming the cherries in rum. The directions specified boiling dried cherries in ¾ cup water, then pouring ¾ cup rum over the cherries, and lighting the whole thing on fire. Being English, I know a few things about lighting things on fire. I’ve had a flaming Christmas Pudding every Christmas and New Year’s Day of my life—the flames are for show. Why do I want to flame the cherries? Who’s watching? I boiled the cherries in the water, added the rum, and set the mixture aside. I know better than to burn up my rum.

The second big problem with the recipe was the ingredient list which called for 5 or 6 very ripe bananas.  Come again? How much banana? Small, medium or large bananas? I had four small and two large bananas, so that’s what I used—not good. The cake was way too moist. Even with 20 minutes extra baking, it was still too moist. Stop the madness! Specify in cups or by weight how much mashed banana to use! For the re-bake, I did a little research. One banana should equal 1/3-½ cup of mashed pulp, a bit more helpful, but still an issue. With 5 or 6 very ripe bananas, I was now dealing with 1½ cups, 1 2/3 cups, 2 cups, or 3 cups of mashed banana! The higher quantity being double the lower quantity! Isn’t this maddening? Recipe’s directions should be written to ensure success. If I follow a recipe I should get a good result, without having to do additional research or recipe reworking. The second Drunken Monkey Cake was baked with 2 cups of mashed banana, which was 4 medium bananas. Still too much banana. 1 2/3 cup of mashed banana is probably just about right.

The next issue with the recipe was to drain the drunken cherries, and to pour the thickened liquid into the bananas. Once again, how much liquid was I to expect from the cherries? What if I didn’t have enough, what if I had too much? The amount of liquid is not so critical in a sauce, but for a cake it makes a big difference. So with my second re-bake, I changed the way of plumping the cherries, and measured the liquid before I added it to the bananas. By this time I had also run out of rum, so I had to switch to brandy! Now I know both rum and brandy taste fine! Start soaking the fruit the night before baking the cake.

The next change I made to the recipe was to substitute chocolate chips for the nuts—think frozen, drunken, chocolate covered bananas! I don’t like nuts, so this was a good option for me, but if I were a nut lover, I think nuts would be awesome in this cake, with or without the addition of chocolate.

The picture above reflects all the changes I made. Now, there is one more issue, I had a piece for breakfast, hic.  Maybe there was a point to burning off the rum! 😮

Drunken Monkey Cake with Chocolate

Adapted from “All Cakes Considered” by Melissa Gray

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups dried cherries—recipe did not specify what kind of dried cherries, so I used tart dried cherries
• 1 cup dark rum (brandy works, too)
• 1 2/3 cups mashed very ripe banana—approximately 3 or 4 medium/large bananas
• 1 cup sugar
• 1¼ cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 4 eggs (at room temperature)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. The night before baking this cake, or early the morning of, pour the rum over the dried cherries, stir, and set aside to plump.
2. Preheat oven to 350°.
3. Mash the bananas and measure 1 2/3 cup of pulp to use in the cake
4. Drain the rum from the cherries—you should have approximately 3 tablespoons of rum—stir this drained rum into the mashed bananas, and set aside
5. Line the bottom of a 10″ tube pan with parchment paper, then spray with Pam or spread with butter. (There is too much batter for a normal 12-cup bundt pan.  If you use a bundt pan, don’t line with parchment paper, but use Baker’s Joy! or Pam to well grease the pan—you’ll probably have enough batter left over to make 4 or 6 muffins—adjust baking times accordingly.
6. In a medium bowl combine the white and wheat flours, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
7. With an electric mixer, beat the butter for a minute or so, then add in the white and brown sugars and beat for an additional 4 minutes.
8. Add eggs, one at a time, to the butter-sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.
9. Stir banana mixture into the butter-sugar-egg mixture, then stir in the vanilla.
10. Slowly add the flour mixture to the banana batter.
11. Stir the drained cherries, nuts and/or chocolate chips into the batter.
12. Pour batter into prepared pan and place into a preheated 350 degree oven.  Bake for about 1 hour or until cake tester comes out clean, and sides start to pull away from the sides of the pan.
13. Cool in pan for ten minutes, then loosen sides and turn out to a wire rack to cool completely.

This makes a lot of cake; depending on how you slice it, you’ll probably have 16-20 slices. Call the neighbors! Just one warning…, no, two warnings. It’s probably best not to serve this cake for breakfast! Hic. Hic. And this is definitely not a good cake for children.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today, you drunken monkey, you, hic!