Wednesday, June 20, 2012

accidental bliss.

Hello summer. Or rather, welcome.  Instead of talking about the sun and how glorious it is, how much is  makes this city sing, and how it's officially the first day of summer I thought I would just show you this.



Blue sky, Ferris wheel, and one giddy girl behind the camera lens.  It's days like these that make you so happy you can't even believe how lucky you are. So excited even though you can't put a finger on what exactly the reason is, you have to share it with someone. And when there is no one in your immediate grasp, these kind of days often end in a long cross country calls to your sister who can only begin to make sense of your excitement when you take your first breath after twenty two minutes of non stop chatter.

That is accidental, stumbled upon, no-real reason kind of bliss. It's my favorite kind.

It was in one of these transcendental states of accidental bliss that I rather inadvertently made this.



While I am not much of a planner, I usually set out to make something specific when I step into the kitchen. More often than not I have a craving, special ingredient, new recipe, or occasion that tends to steer me towards the end result.  But yesterday, yesterday was some spontaneous domino effect kinda baking.

Honestly, I wasn't going to bake anything. I was going to clean.  But when I went to throw away some brown specked bananas, I realized I hadn't replaced the garbage bag, and in the moment it took me to set down the bananas and replace the trash bag I thought hey- I should probably use these.

So then I was going to make cookies. Cowboy cookies to be exact.  My second snafu (or shall we say stroke of good luck) was that I only had super cold butter. So I cheated and went to soften the butter on the stove, but as a I do from time to time, I got momentarily distracted and my butter went from soft to bubbling so I figured I might as well let it go all the way to brown.

So then I had bananas and brown butter and the inkling of a plan. If you don't know this about me, and why would you I guess, I love alliteration. A lot. I mean look at my name, it was meant to be.

Anyways, for no other reason than wanting to add a forth b to the mix I added some bourbon.  That's what happened. Born out of a spontaneous string of events, affinity of word sounds, and most importantly a state of utter accidental bliss I present Brown Butter Bourbon Banana Bread. 


Yum. 






Brown Butter Banana Bread

1/3 cup butter, browned and salted
2 -3 large brown bananas mashed
1 egg (beaten slightly)
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons bourbon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt
dashes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup milk chocolate chips (optional... but really?)

Brown butter on stove. Wait for butter to bubble, get translucent, then remove from heat before it burns. You should be able to tell by the smell, brown butter smells more like nuts than actual butter.
Mix butter in with mashed bananas. Add in sugar, egg, vanilla, bourbon. Sprinkle in salt, spices, and soda.  Add in flour last. Stir to combine. Add in choc chips. Pour batter into buttered bread pan and bake at 350 for about 50 minutes.



No comments:

Post a Comment