There were two half-brown bananas sitting on my counter and I didn’t feel like working. I’d just spent the day running, running errands and running after a kid, what I needed to do is clean up after it all. But I was too distracted for that. Something in my head didn’t register that 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon was really close to the end of the weekend. In my mind, I had time to spare. And everyone knows the best thing to do when you have no time for anything is to bake.
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So the two half-brown bananas and the one and only recipe I remember from childhood, and have remembered through out my life, became bread.
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It’s not impressive, really. It’s probably the same recipe you, your family, the neighbor and her family all have used their entire lives, too. Or some slight variation thereof.
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You start with the bananas, of course.
There are also eggs, just the beginning of the arguably cardiac-damaging ingredients. But if you’re me, you have a coworker that raises chickens. Chickens who live free and sing elegant melodies while they lay eggs. Or something like that. And you use these lightly speckled, sing-songy eggs for your bread.
What I love about this recipe, other than the fact that it’s in my head, is that even though it’s baking, it truly is mostly just baking. Combining all the ingredients takes about 10 minutes, the batter stands for about 20 minutes and then, into the pan and into the oven, to be forgotten about for a good 50- 60 minutes. (Note: I am so glad they invented oven timers in this time in history. I would have made an awful 1800’s baker.)
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I love something I can dump into a loaf pan and fifty minutes later, call it bread. But on Sunday, I couldn’t find my loaf pan. Really. Who loses a loaf pan? Well, me, for about five minutes. And in that five minutes, it occurred to me: bundt! I don’t know if I love using it or typing it or saying it more. But bundt, of course!
So after the mixing and the pouring and the scraping and listening to the complaining because there was “barely any batter left in the bowl,” into the oven it went. (And seriously, I have never gotten into the batter-licking thing, so please explain this to me. Maybe it is just the carbohydrate lover in me, but why lick raw batter when you could, theoretically, have more bread in the end?)
Ironically, it turned out there was extra batter. As a side effect of my ability to get this together in ten minutes, apparently, batter flies.
You should have seen her trying to lick it off, once she realized it was there. If getting entertainment out of those that depend on you for life and happiness isn’t your idea of the best fun, well you’d better be the one in charge of keeping me from having children.
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Forty minutes* at 325 would pass, though. The bathroom and the dog would be cleaned. The oven timer would sound. And the bundt would be turned over, revealing banana bread, sans nuts. Some are allergic, you know.
My intention was to bring this to work, because it is always my intention. I need bread made with eggs, sugar and shortening lying around the house like I need the proverbial hole in the head. So I sliced it and packed it up for the office.
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Most of it. Because why else did I run ten miles that morning.
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*Time adjusted for the change in pans.