Using a lovely recipe from 3191 Miles Apart, Mateo and I embarked on a little afternoon baking. Mateo's not really fond of bananas in general, unless they are baked in a bread with maple syrup of course.
Maple Banana Bread
11 ounces white whole wheat flour (or unbleached all purpose)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
4 ounces butter, melted
5 ounces maple syrup, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
3 bananas, mashed
3 tablespoons milk
For the topping I use turbinado raw sugar + slighty ground up rolled oats but you can do whatever you like. Try brown sugar or cinnamon and sugar. Experiment!
Oven: 350ºF / 180ºC
Grease loaf pan and parchment the bottom if you like (I don't)
Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together and set aside. Mix well butter and syrup. Beat in eggs one at a time and then mix in the mashed banana. Stir the milk into that mixture and add the whole thing to the dry ingredients. Don't over-mix, please. Pour into loaf pan and top with your sugar/oat topping. Bake for 35-40 minutes rotating in the middle of the bake-time. Check for a little cracking on top and the bread pulling away from the sides. Be careful not to over-bake or it will be dry. I have trained my nose to know when this bread is done and I bet you can as well … you just want to smell the bananas deeply. It's hard to explain but use your gut.
For three whole days I was alone. Three. Whole. Days. The longest I've spent alone in 5 years. As I dropped off Matt and the boys at the airport to head to Atlanta for Matt's sister's wedding, it was hard to look at my children's faces as I pulled away, a mix of excitement for the plane ride and bewilderment that I was driving away without them. My aim, in their absence, was to somehow indulge myself without guilt. I had planned dinner with friends each night, one with an old friend in town from New York, who I always look forward to catching up with. Indeed there was lots of food happiness as evidenced above. There was a movie with my mom, a sunset walk on the beach, a new book to start, a massage, three mornings of sleep past dawn. It was blessing given the tough week that is ahead. By the third day I noticed myself returning to my solo, pre-married days when I would visit the newsstand in New York and return home with a 50-pound bag of magazines. This time there was Interview, New Yorker, Sunset, Gourmet, Harper's, Another Magazine. I even splurged on a French Vogue.
It was a busy but interesting weekend as usual around here. First I was lucky enough to see Brian Blade, one of my favorite artists, blaze with his band at the Catalina Jazz Club. It was a performance I won't soon forget.