Are you like me? Do you ever wake up somewhat refreshed on a Sunday morning, snuggled under the duvet, thinking about all the things you want/need to get done (such as clean, fix, paint, wash, fold, shop) and then spend like two hours drinking coffee and looking at pinterest on your iphone while your kids play video games?

Well, anyway, that’s what I did this morning. But it was soooo nice. To do… nothing. And then, as there was just the slightest crisp to the air I decided to drink a third cup of coffee and bake. I had two sticks of butter, half a tub of mascarpone, old bananas and a butt-load of dark chocolate.

First up, this recipe for dark chocolate and mascarpone brownies I found on theKitchn. They are good, if a little more like a cake then a brownie. I had no cocoa powder left so I added in extra dark chocolate (4 oz instead of 3 oz), as well as some ground almonds so perhaps that altered the texture. The kids la la loved them! Oh yeah, and I skipped the ganache part. I just can’t put frosting on brownies, even if it’s homemade ganache. It’s like putting frosting on fudge.

While the brownies were baking, I tackled some dark chocolate banana cake. This was the first time I made banana cake without a recipe, so in a way, it’s my own recipe. Also, I had no butter left so I had to improvise. This came out moist, fluffy and purrrfect for an early Autumn day.

Dark chocolate, almond and olive oil banana cake

3/4 cup greek yogurt
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3 bananas or 2 large bananas
1 1/2 cups whole wheat or white wheat flour
1/2 cup ground almonds or almond meal
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbs honey
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
chopped dark chocolate to taste

1. Mix all the wet ingredients together
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together and incorporate. Start with 1 cup of wheat flour and add in the other 1/2 cup if necessary. The batter should be like a cake batter, not thick like a banana bread batter.
3. Pour into a bread tin or a cake tin lined with parchment paper.
3. Bake on the middle oven rack for 40 min to an hour on 325/350 F oven. Prick with a fork and when it comes away dry, it is ready.