My dear, lovely Adventurers, what do you do when you crave carbs? That which bread, pasta, and rice give so freely? I love carbs, and I try to be thoughtful about where they come from, but, like everyone else, I like to indulge on occasion, and I don’t always want to have to buy something packaged for the indulgence. So, how did I solve my craving this time? Two words: Banana bread.
I love banana bread, but I don’t make it very often. The main reason is that even though I buy bananas weekly, my son and I usually eat them before they get ripe enough, and if I bought extra bananas for bread, he would eat those, too. So when I tell you that it was pure happenstance to have the right bananas, I am being completely honest. Even better, the recipe I used called for two bananas, and I had four, so I got to experiment a little.
In a true adventure format, we had to have some things that did not work out quite right. So, I did not have baking soda for this particular recipe and had to trust the internet saying I could use baking powder if I correctly adjusted the amounts. It was also not the recipe I wanted to use, so I’ll post it next time. I had planned to make this fantastic protein bread that was all extra healthy and fancy. So naturally I got home and looked at what I thought I had versus what I had, only to realize that I didn’t have everything to make my fancy bread. But I could still make bread. So dang it, we made bread.
I love to bake Adventurers, but I’ve always been nervous. There is something about that moment when your creation goes into the oven, and you can no longer tweak or adjust it. That just makes me anxious. What if my temps are wrong? What if I didn’t weigh properly, or my butter was too soft…or not soft enough? With cooking, you can keep adjusting and tweaking. Chicken undercooked? Put it back in the oven. Baked things don’t like to be re-baked.
So now I was stepping into that nervousness with a tweaked recipe. Tweaking a recipe that I don’t know inside and out adds to the anxiousness. Perfect a cookie or a brownie recipe and add/change it? No anxiety until the baking starts. But baking, for me, is like flying. I love to travel and go places, but man, I hate takeoffs and landings.
So, I doubled this tweaked recipe because I had extra bananas. Half of the batter went into a standard loaf pan to go to work, and the other half had some collagen added to it and was done up in mini loaves to be enjoyed at home by the family.
One of my favorite things about any recipe is getting my kids to taste it and weigh in. Plus, what kid doesn’t like licking the better off a spoon or a whisk? My kids know their duty and they perform. But my littlest…..oh my littlest….he knows how to add to the anxiousness. He’s my Banana Fiend and he licked his finger and told me he didn’t like the batter. I was shattered. What did I do wrong? How does Banana Fiend not like my banana bread? So, deep breath. I firmly believe that lousy energy going into a bake will impact it (yes I believe that, deal with it.)
I have to tell you, my lovely Adventurers, that I was so happy when I pulled these loaves out of the oven. They looked perfect, they smelled perfect, they felt perfect. JOY was the only thing I felt. The biggest thing I look for when I bake is the response from those who try it. So now, the moment of truth. What would Banana Fiend say when he tried the bread? Would he like it? Would he hate it?
He loved it.
Again, JOY abounded. The loaf I took to work was destroyed in a day, and my kids worked through their mini loaves like they were the last thing they would ever eat. I was so happy with how this turned out, and I can’t wait to make it again, with the proper ingredients, and then try my high protein recipe and see how it turns out. I promise another post when I do it.
Now I ask you my Adventurers: what is a thing you love that still brings anxiety? What mountain do you love to climb but still worry about when you near the summit?
Take me home!
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