Banana, Walnut, Chocolate Skillet Cake

This recipe surprised the heck out of me.  I made it one random Wednesday night when I was bored and when I get bored, I bake. 

Looking around the kitchen and pantry to see what I wanted to make, I spotted two spotted bananas that I had been meaning to peel and stick in the freezer so I figured I might as well use them up.

I didn't feel like having regular old banana bread or muffins - I wanted chocolate.  So, I did the most obvious thing I could think of and turned to Pinterest.

Luckily, over a year ago I pinned this recipe for Banana, Walnut & Chocolate Cookie Cake, which I have renamed a skillet cake because that's what it is and it's freakin' delicious!

One of the best things about this cake is that it is made entirely in a cast iron skillet.  The whole thing gets mixed in the skillet and baked in it too which made me super happy.  First of all, I love my cast iron skillet - it's the Southern girl in me who thinks you should use cast iron whenever possible.  Second (and possibly more importantly) this means that you don't have to dirty a bowl which means less dishes which I'm a fan.

First you melt butter in the skillet, then turn off the heat, add the sugar and stir that around.  Next the eggs and vanilla extract go in (stir it up fast so the eggs don't cook), followed by the bananas and cinnamon.  The rest of the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and salt) round it out.  The very last thing that goes in are walnuts and chocolate chips.  As the original recipe suggests, I used dark chocolate chips which I think are very important in this recipe.  In fact, I may just start using them all the time instead of semi-sweet chips - they just taste better.

The batter was probably a little too warm when I stirred in the chocolate because it melted a little bit.  It wasn't a huge deal but if I made it again, I'd let the mixture cool a bit more to keep it the chips from melting.

Oh my, this cake is so yummy.  I really loved it.  CA really loved it.  CA's coworkers really loved it.  It disappeared as fast as anything else I've ever made.  Plus, it's so easy to make and requires few dirty dishes.  It doesn't get much better than that!  The cinnamon in here really adds something special to the cake - I was a little leery of it but I think I would have missed it if it hadn't been there.

This recipe can be found at Joy the Baker (which, by the way, is one of my favorite blogs).  I doubled the recipe and cooked it in a 12" skillet instead of an 8" skillet and increased the baking time to about 30 minutes.  You'll definitely want to do that too because you'll want to have much, much more of it.

Enjoy!
Julie