Menage à Trois Bingo

Yesterday was ohari's 40th birthday (Happy birthday, darling) and we threw him a Ballistics party. lavendargrrl found a couple of books at ThinkGeek: The Art of the Catapult and Backyard Ballistics. We went to Lowe's last week and bought materials for two "Viking Catapults" and "God's Stone Thrower" models, the birthday boy built them (with assistance from me, Tammie, and scottak) and we took them to the park yesterday to fling water balloons (the which may be seen in ona_tangent's lovely photo that has become my new default icon) at each other and the rest of our guests. It was a wonderful day to be outside in the park; the weather was warm but not hot and the humidity was not bad either. All the assorted kidlets had a grand time with the water, and the adults did too.

Our Chris is fond of bananananananas. His usual request for birthday cake is Banana Cream Pie, but due to the outdoor party, I felt a cream pie would not do well. So I made him Banana Cake instead: two standard yellow cake mixes; go light on the oil (it called for 2/3 cup for the two: we only had 1/4 cup anyway) and add five pureed bananas. Took about fifteen minutes longer to bake than the prescribed time.

It made two smallish sheet cakes (13x9 and 12x8) and I frosted them each differently: one got Chocolate-Peanut Butter frosting (substitute peanut butter for the butter in a basic chocolate buttercream icing) and the other got Chocolate-Banana frosting (more pureed bananas, natch).

I have found that bananas substitute more-or-less one-for-one with butter. One pureed banana = one stick of butter. Works in cookies, cakes, frosting... Of course, you have to want the final product to taste like bananas, and some change in texture may be expected. :-)