This was the main dessert for the Friday the 13th Dinner Party.

The frosting is what makes this cake special and bananas are the unlucky ingredient.

It’s crazy how many “explanations” there are for the superstition that bananas on boats bring bad luck, illness, and bad fishing. Here are but a few from Snopes.com:

• When top-heavy ships of earlier eras would sink, precious little other than the bananas they’d carried would be found floating on the surface, thereby leaving some to conclude conveyance of the fruit itself had led to these naval mishaps.
• Spiders, snakes, and other poisonous vermin living among bananas carried in the hold would, on long haul trips, expand their horizons by infesting other parts of the ship.
• Because the speediest sailing ships were used to get bananas to their destinations before they could spoil, those attempting to fish from them never caught anything while trolling.
• Fisherman became ill after eating the fruit.
• Other fruits would spoil more quickly when bananas were being shipped along with them, causing folks to deem bananas “bad luck.” (Technically, it wouldn’t have been ill fate that resulted in the spoilage of other foodstuffs, but instead, the ethylene gas emitted by bananas as they ripen.)
• Crew member injured by slipping on discarded banana peels.
• Banana oil rubs off onto the hands of a fisherman, thereby “spooking” the fish.

Makes me wonder if Banana Boat sunscreen was named as an ode to the superstition. Anyhow, this cake was lucky for me because it turned out perfectly. One thing though, I think it tastes better the day after it is baked.

*** Note: The cake was the first of the recipes I made for the party, so don’t mind me, I thought I was being cute and clever when I placed lucky and unlucky “charms” in the photos as I made the cake. 🙂

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