Banana bread will cheer you up...

I’m a notorious procrastinator. It’s true. I’m trying to get better but sometimes I “fall off the wagon,” if you will. There are some days (seems like most days lately…) when the sun refuses to smile and the clouds slowly creep lower and lower until I feel like the sky will slowly crush me into a vitamin D deficient blob of gray goop. In college I learned that on days like this I have to accept that I won’t put checks next to everything on my to-do list, it’s better to just go out and do something constructive, something maybe not “productive” but at least satisfying. In the most gender roll-perfect sense, I find that baking is the perfect activity…I may not be solving the world’s problems, but at least I’m making something tasty that will spread a little joy to others.

Today, I made banana bread. Not just any old banana bread, this is a chock-full, pantry-cleaning, hearty, fattening, warm, soul-filling sort of banana bread…as rule 60 in Michael Pollan’s Food Rules states: “Treat treats as treats.” To me, that means fill them full of sugar and butter and really enjoy, there’s no shame in a treat. I modified this recipe from Bon Appetite…I’ll explain my modifications after the recipe because I have a tendency to add without measuring so there’s no way to give you the exact recipe I used.

Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping

INGREDIENTS1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 to 3 medium)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup water

2 1/2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9x5x3-inch metal baking pan. Whisk 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl. Whisk next 5 ingredients in large bowl until smooth. Add dry ingredients; stir to blend. Transfer batter to pan. Mix 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and brown sugar; sprinkle over batter.

Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool bread in pan 30 minutes. Turn pan on its side; slide out bread, being careful not to dislodge topping. Turn bread right side up and cool completely.

So, I added much more cinnamon and honey, because really, that stuff is GREAT. Next, I added about ¾ of an apple because I noticed a delightful looking loaf of banana apple bread on the Bella Eats blog. Plus, I could probably eat apples with every meal for the rest of my life and be totally content. I also made a middle “layer” of cranberries, pecans and cinnamon sugar.

I made up my own crumble. If you’ve never made up a crumble, you should. They are so wonderful and pretty close to impossible to mess up, plus, every time you make one it has a slightly different character than the one before. Beautiful. My crumbles generally involve oats, brown sugar, honey, and a generous amount of butter mixed up by hand (nothing will make you feel better than getting your hands dirty in a nice, oaty crumble). I sprinkled it on top with more cranberries and pecans pieces to give the final loaf a little more color.

My confession: the pan was too small and the edges/top are a little overdone while the inside is a little gooey…the slices don’t come out so beautifully…but the whole thing is delicious enough that you can just spoon it out—no one seems to be complaining about appearances over here...