Erin Mann is baking a new cake every week for a year from the "All Cakes Considered" cookbook and shares her adventures here on AnnArbor.com. Read past columns here.

“On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield, but on a banana it's just the opposite. Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead, and red means where the hell did you get that banana at...” -Mitch Hedberg

My housemate Tonya had been asking the same question for weeks, “Are you baking the ‘naner cake?” My answer, “No, not yet,” always disappointed her.

This week, like every other, I baked a cake. As it cooled on a wire rack on my dining room table, I grabbed my cell phone and typed on its touch screen, “The moment we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived...”

Minutes later the phone sounded, notifying me of a new text message. Tonya replied, “Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting?”

“All Cakes Considered” author Melissa Gray found the recipe for banana cake in a “70s-era” Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook.

An updated edition of the red plaid BHG cookbook was a gift from my mother in my early 20s. I credit this book for teaching me to cook. As a young adult living on my own, I’d grown tired of college student culinary staples like ramen noodles and Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner. (You might say I had the “blue box blues.”) Its recipes, basic but comprehensive, were the perfect introduction to the world of home cooking.

After last week’s demonstration of my poor planning with the black walnuts (a big thank you to the readers who invited me to tramp through their backyards and collect walnuts after reading about my fruitless, err nutless, search), you’d think I would have thought to buy a bunch of bananas days before I was to bake this cake. But, in my typical fashion, I waited until the day before I wanted to bake to go to the grocery store.

I’ve got a recipe that calls for 1 1/4 cups ripe bananas and I’ve got three firm, green ones. What’s a baking bachelorette to do?

I recalled a tip from my trusted BHG cookbook for ripening fruit quickly: Place the fruit in a paper bag. The Food Network website suggests putting an apple in the bag with the bananas to increase the amount of ethylene gas and accelerate the ripening process.

After 24 hours of co-mingling with an apple in their paper bag incubator, my once green bananas were ripe and ready to be mashed.

In my favorite lavender mixing bowl, I creamed the shortening and gradually added the sugar. The recipe deviates from the standard mixing procedure; instead of adding eggs next, it instructs adding the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. This resulted in a substance that looked like grated Parmesan cheese.

The batter smoothed out dramatically once the bananas, buttermilk and eggs were added.

For the frosting, I melted two 1-ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate in a makeshift double boiler (metal bowl placed over a saucepan full of simmering water). I removed from the heat and stirred in 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract. This caused the chocolate to change textures from a smooth, shiny liquid to a dull lump resembling Mackinac Island Fudge. This worried me a little.

I creamed 6 tablespoons of butter and gradually added 4 3/4 cups confectioners sugar and 1/4 cup of cream, alternating between additions of sugar and cream until it was all blended in.

Next, I reluctantly added my chocolate fudge lump and mixed well until there were no traces of chocolate lump-lettes and the frosting was smooth. At this point, the frosting was still too thick for my liking, so I mixed in a splash of cream to thin it out a little.

Bananas and chocolate? This cake was destined to taste spectacular from the start, but I wanted to add a little something special.

I melted two tablespoons butter in a saucepan, and mixed in a hefty tablespoon of brown sugar and a couple splashes of dark rum. After a few minutes on low heat the mixture had thickened to a syrup. I added two sliced bananas and gently mixed to coat.

The cake was baked in a tube pan with straight sides and was therefore easy to cut crosswise into two layers. I sandwiched the syrup-drenched banana slices in between the two layers along with a thin coat of chocolate frosting, the glue that would hold this fabulous cake together.

Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting was very a-peel-ing to all who tried it. It inspired enthusiastic expressions of “Oh, my God,” audible mmms and blissful eye rolling.

Erin Mann is lover of all things cake and ruining diets one cake at a time. E-mail the baking bachelorette at SheGotTheBeat@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter. Facebook users can also keep up-to-date with A CAKE A WEEK by joining the group.