Another "commitment"

I was way too late with the last Mellow Baker post, I am writing my BBBabes post at the last day (minute) lately and I totally forgot the existance of Bread Baking Day (how did that happen?) for two months...so I sure don't sound like a person who needs another challenge to do in blogland, right?! So what do I do?
Of course I jump and take on another chore to do once a month: The Avid Baker's Challenge, 1 book a year, 12 recipes, 1 a month. A baking challenge started by Hanaa and this madness of finding more to do started last night, when I was sleepless for hours and tried to clean my reader (didn't yet), so I visited my lovely and talented fellow babe Karen Baking Soda, who posted about such a wonderful bundt cake. I got inspired. She baked the recipe of this month "Nut Crusted chocolate-banana swirl cake", without the nut crust, without the banana, I just had to laugh, so funny. So yes Karen it's all your fault :). Did I tell you I love bundt cakes? I have way to many bundt pans and love to bake in them.

I noticed the recipes for 2012 are from "The weekend baker" by Abigail Dodge. A book that I happen to have and - shame on me- only baked from it once, for some reason it just didn't work for me when I got it. I haven't bought a book for a while now, 'cause I have just too many that I have never or hardly baked or cooked from. And it was my plan to use the books that I have more this year... so what better opportunity to follow up on my good intentions and step on the ABC bus and give it a go for a year to start. Unfortunately for you all there won't be lots of recipes, which is logical when there are more that a few recipes baked from one book. I you like what you see you can always buy it. This means a little easier on me to, cause I don't have to type the recipes and translate them as well.

Then I read that entries had to be posted on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd of the month.
Sjeez late again, but nothing to do about that, but take the butter, eggs and milk out of the fridge, turn back to bed for an hour to get warm again and bake as soon as everyone is out of the door early this morning. And so I did.

And look at that, I think it looks fabulous :).

The Nut crusted chocolate-banana cake (with nut crust and with banana). As I make diary-free versions of everthing I bake (if possible) I used vegetable margarine and in stead of the buttermilk, I make  'sour' milk, by adding lemon juice to rice (or oat) milk. (this because we have a son with cow milk allergy). Because Dutch buttermilk  and even more so my sour milk concoction is quite thin (thinner than US buttermilk), it was all a bit liquidy and that had me worried for a second. But it was all spot on and came out  great. Even my marbling -which always looks strange or doesn't look marbled at all when I do it-, wasn't too bad.

Update: I forgot to tell you how it tastes! That's what it's all about isn't it. DE-LI-CI-OUS. Such a great combination chocolate and banana. Even our youngest, who hates bananas, ate it in a flash. Smells wonderful too. A winner!!