Winter Baking

As some of you may know, I'm not the most successful cook most of the time. Something always goes wrong, even if whatever it is turns out fine in the end. Except banana bread. I am quite good at making banana bread, if I do say so myself.

I've come across lots of different variations for banana bread. Some have chocolate chips or peanut butter glazes. But I prefer using the recipe we've always used, which was my great-grandma's. It's the one my mom always made, and my grandma always made, though she added nuts and I omit those from my recipe.

Yesterday, we got hit with a pretty big snowfall, and what else do you do when you the snow is falling and blowing across the yard? You bake (or shovel, which I probably should have done before it built up so much). I happened to have four bananas that were too brown for me to eat, so I peeled them, mashed them up, and added them to Sunny, my stand mixer. When we registered, I thought about the default Kitchen Aid. But then I saw the Sunbeam mixer at Penney's and fell in love with its vintage style. We got it as a wedding present from a dear friend, who had the sweetest intentions of giving it to us. And I love it.

I didn't have regular crisco, just butter-flavored, but I think it gave it an extra bit of deliciousness. Shelby was glad I was baking because she got to lick the floor after I sprayed the pan with cooking spray. And the whole house stayed warm and smelled delicious on a late winter day.

I personally like the banana bread to be a little underdone, so in 50 minutes, it was ready to come out of the oven. And that was perfect: It had just a little batter strip at the top and was warm and yummy otherwise. A perfect treat--and a success story.