Making Things Up

Sometimes you've got to say "to hell with recipes" and just wing it.

If you're looking for a stepping stone I totally support glancing at a recipe, I also support 100% following a recipe if that's what floats your boat and keeps the anxiety away.

Why am I talking to you about recipes? Because my friend Conner and I made up some damn good banana bread last week and I'd like to share our (rough) recipe with you.

It started with overripe bananas and some irresistible ricotta. Then we gathered up the oats and honey, and shortly after that we glanced over a couple of different recipes and suddenly banana bread was born.

We put some in a muffin pan so we could bring them over to Conner's lovely neighbors (I want their garden like woah) and the rest in a loaf pan.

We also put a layer of ricotta in the muffin variety. How could I leave that out?! Let me just apologize right now for almost leaving a layer of ricotta out of your life.

Dry
1.5 cups All Purpose Flour
1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup Old Fashioned Oats
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Dash of Ground Clove
1.5 tsp salt
1.5 tsp Baking Soda

Wet
3/4 cup Ricotta
4 Very Ripe Bananas, mushed up
3 Eggs
1.25 cups Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Honey
1/2 cup melted butter

Streusel
1/4 cup brown butter
2 tbsp cold butter
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup flour
1 tbsp honey


Ricotta Filling (for muffins)
1 cup ricotta
1.5 tbsp honey


1. preheat oven to 300 fahrenheit
2. combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, mix together
3. using a hand mixer or kitchen aid (with a whip attachement) beat the sugar and eggs together until they thicken and lighten
4. slowly drizzle in the melted butter while mixing, add the honey & ricotta. mix to combine
5. combine the wet and dry and mix well
6. butter a loaf pan and muffin pan
7. pour mixture into the loaf pan, just under 2/3 way full
8. pour extra in the muffin tin, but only 1/3 of the way, then add a small spoon of the ricotta filling and top off with some batter so they are a little more than 1/2 way full
9. for the streusel,combine all the ingredients in a bowl, it shouldn't bit fully mixed but chunky and just barely combined
10. top the banana bread and muffins off with the streusel, if you want a heavier streusel top than go right ahead and throw in some after handfuls of oats and some butter and what not. the streusel is hardly a precise recipe

Say yes to banana bread folks!

Now look at this great/fun/silly project by artist Kurt Perschke, I love it. Big red ball. How fun!

Go ahead, try this "recipe" or take a peak at it and say effff it, and make it up. Either way you'll probably maybe have an awesome time and there's a 73% chance you'll be left with some bangin' bananer bread.