Comfort Food equals Banana Bread

For my family when things are out of control crazy things get forgotten; like the fresh bananas in the fruit basket. Sometimes we even like to intentionally let them turn the perfect brown for something sweet and savory and the perfect pick me up. Ok so I have lots of perfect pick me ups, but this one is very easy, quick, and nearly fool proof. If you forget a few ingredients it may or may not turn out nearly as great.

 

Nearly Foolproof Banana Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Butter...if I am in a hurry I will use Margarine straight out of the fridge since its soft cold

1 Cup Sugar

1 Egg

3+ Medium Brown Bananas I have used up to 5 and this still turns out great

2 Cups Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

5 Tbsp Milk

I love that this is made with what I like to call real ingredients, ones that we almost always have in the kitchen. I admit I am most likely to be out of sugar.....I have a sweet tea addiction and can't help it.  These are the perfect stage to make banana bread; I love buying the brown ones from the store when they are deeply discounted and make up some to freeze. Getting bananas at the perfect stage helps with flavor, but if they are a little worse than these they will still work great. If they have turned to liquid mush then it's past time and best to freeze for smoothies later.

Contrary to most people's thoughts I do not pre mix the dry ingredients and jump right in. So throw the butter and sugar in the bowl and get to mixing. After the butter and sugar are well mixed add the egg and mix well. Once the egg is mixed in begin adding the bananas. I wanted to make sure that you saw the inside of the bananas since they look a little worse for the wear in the last photo. These are soft and I cut off any really brown areas. Then I just mix the bananas in until they are broken up, but not completely demolished. Leave some of the chunks for little surprises in the bread. 

Because the best part of comfort food is the ease, at this point just begin throwing in the dry ingredients. I try to separate the baking soda and baking powder but if I am in a hurry I just go with it and it always seems to work out. Once the flour, baking soda, and baking powder are mixed in add the 5 tablespoons of milk and mix until there are no pools of milk. Once everything is mixed together you are ready to put it into the pans. At this point I usually think oh no I forgot to grease the pans and I do love the bread to slide right out. So out comes the greatest invention ever...well at times like this I think this is the greatest invention.....the flour spray, oh how I love you. I use medium sized pans so I spray 2 real quick and divide the batter evenly. I jiggle the pans a little if the batter isn't spreading out evenly but that happens rarely.

 

If you know me really well you know that I hate high electric bills, so I do not pre-heat the oven. Just turn it onto 350 degrees, and put the pans into the oven. My oven takes about 5 minutes to get up to 350 so I just set the timer for 45 minutes and walk away. After 45 minutes you should have some really great smelling bread that is a nice golden brown and slightly cracked on the top. I also don't always check the inside if it looks like it does on the right. After about 5-10 minutes I will remove the bread from the pan. If you don't it will begin to sweat and you will have soggy bread.

 

After trying to resist the urge to pick it up and tear off chunks and eat an entire loaf, I do slice just one just to make sure it's perfect for my family to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 The kid's do prefer to add butter while it's still hot!


 

For Printable Recipe click here.



Apples and TV...they just go together

The week has been exceptionally crazy, but some of it I may have brought on myself. The quick story is Tuesday evening after some of the worst customer service from our cable provider, I turned the cable service off at both my own and my mother's house.

Had I been thinking and not acted rash, I would have realized that left my less than 24 hours to determine what I was going to do and do it quickly so that the herd would be able to watch their favorite show Wednesday evening. Wednesdays are crazy long days and having technologically challenged parents did not help that day go any faster. So desperate times call for desperate acts.....and I decided I would find a way that would allow the herd to watch their favorite shows and I not be required to deal with awful customer service, because mindlessly watching TV is the herd's favorite past time. Hello Apple TV, I sure hadn't ever planned to buy one but now I wish I had oh so long ago.


There it is the tiny black box that saved
 my sanity!

A little about Apple TV in case you are like me and hadn't ever paid any attention to it, hey if it ain't broke why fix it is my motto. First you need a Wi-Fi....check I already had one. Next and I didn't know this until I went to plug it in, your TV needs to have an HDMI slot. Well if you are like me and have the mega I will herniate you if you try to move me box TV.....you better start begging to borrow one...in my case I had my eyes set on my son's TV. Pretty much I said you are grounded from your TV for so long for poor behavior that I am going to use it until I decide to buy a new one. Third you need an iTunes account...well if you are buying an Apple TV you probably have at least an iPhone. Last you don't need one but I recommend a hulu plus account....it's 7.99 such a small price for my sanity. If your on the fence you can see if a free account is more to your liking and in your budget. A side note is if you do not already have the iTunes Match, it is worth it unless you have a monstrous hard drive, which I do not so I gladly paid for the match.

As with any Apple product you better believe the user interface is top notch and this one does not disappoint. My phone picture is pretty terrible but my camera picture was worse with the glare off the screen. This is the home screen in case you haven't seen it. So far there hasn't been any time where there isn't something to watch, and I get to watch some of my all time favorite shows that have long been cancelled. One of the things I have learned is that the shows that are available free on the web, can be seen on the TV through airplay sharing. I haven't tackled this yet as there is no shortage of things to soak up my day.


In the spirit of Apple and as a way to celebrate my break from horrible customer service I decided that I needed to have a really great apple recipe to share with you. So I made one of my all time favorite things...well I have a lot of favorite foods, but if there is a choice I will always go for apple cobbler. So here is my super quick way to make your own apple cobbler.

Ingredients:
3 medium apples (I used red delicious ones that were getting wrinkly on my counter)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk

First core, peel (only if you prefer, I didn't), and chop the apples. Add 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of sugar to the apples and let them sit while you make the batter. To make the batter melt the butter in a 9"x9" or similar sized baking dish. I use the microwave and while it's working mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and milk in a glass bowl until it's smooth. Once smooth pour this directly onto the melted butter. Pour the apples directly on top of the batter. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

 

 

I eat this straight up without any toppings, but feel free to add some vanilla ice cream on top!

For printable recipe click here.