Banana Bread or Nostalgia in an Oven

Stirring, scooping, shaking, spilling, tasting, watching and smelling. What’s not to love about “helping” you in the kitchen?

Love, Toddler

A bunch of overripe bananas fragrantly begged to be turned into banana bread this morning so I willingly obliged. Plus, my 21mo old was whining about watching “Deego” on tv. If you can translate that, good on you. If you can’t, consider yourself lucky.

Anyway, a sure fire way to stop the whining is to enlist her help in the kitchen. She loves it! There isn’t a lot that she can do on her own, but I pull a stool up to the counter and she “stirs” while I add ingredients. She also scoops things for me and helps me find things. I’ll ask her where the flour is and she’ll point to it or at least the general area. Before eggs and whatnot are added she gets to taste the batter which she loves and I wait for her to give her seal of approval. An emphatic nod of her head and a very serious, “Good.”

The smell of banana bread cooking in the oven reminds of my own childhood. By sharing the baking experience with my daughter I hope to create happy memories she can look back on and share with her own kids.

The baking part was so much fun I forgot to take a picture of the final product. And the delicious recipe we used was the best banana bread ever. For a very moist loaf mix the wet and dry ingredients until just moist, try to avoid over mixing. Have your pans ready to go so you can pop them immediately into your preheated oven. I also threw my chocolate chips in the freezer so my bread was more chocolate chippy than chocolate gooey. Happy baking!