The Magic Chocolate Chip Banana Cake I Couldn’t Get Enough of as a New Parent

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My biggest adjustment in those first days motherhood, the moment I realized that my life was forever changed — was our first meal at home as a family. Our friends had come over, lugging enough Vietnamese takeout to feed us for a week. I was ravenous. 

I’d had a rough start breastfeeding twins and was either feeding or attempting to feed most of the time, without the confidence that anything would ever get easier. My stomach was beyond ready to tear into the giant spread like a raccoon, but, of course my hands were full. And that’s something rarely talked about in parenting circles: your hands may not be fully accessible for a long time.

I placed one of my daughters — a tiny thing resembling a wrinkled potato — into a bouncy chair. Once she was safely clipped in, and with my other daughter tucked into the crook of my arm, I used my remaining hand to shovel spring rolls into my mouth. Cutlery only slowed me down, acting as an unnecessary impediment in the food-to-mouth continuum. It was clumsy and fast, and I realized I would be eating in this way for the foreseeable future. 

That moment was not lost on me, and even though I had lots to celebrate and was very proud of myself for making two new humans, I also felt a little sad. If I’m honest, I felt a little helpless too.  

When I remember those early days as a new family, I think of how often I made toast — only a finger required to push a lever, and the charred bread satisfyingly cold and chewy by the time I got around to eating it. Later, I made a scrambled egg or two, clumsily at first, then more deftly with practice. I ate most of my meals standing over the sink, or huddled on the couch, covering my daughters in seedy cracker crumbs while I tried to keep us all fed. 

It was an adjustment period for everyone, and as the days melted into months I found pockets of time where I invariably ended up in the kitchen, enjoying the freedom of finally using two hands — a brief break in the day where I was not needed and could do something for myself. I baked, regularly, my mother’s chocolate chip banana cake — a sort of magic cake because bananas and chocolate commingle to create more deliciousness than each ingredient is capable of on its own. It can easily be baked, cooled, cut into squares, and frozen for fast, one-handed eating. It was a necessary comfort.

These days, even though my girls are about to turn 4 and I have long ago reclaimed (almost) full use of my hands, I find myself making the cake again. Sometimes, because I have a few spotty bananas sitting hopefully on the counter, but more often because it’s the perfect, most nourishing thing to drop on a friend’s doorstep in difficult times.