I woke up this morning to rain and two very ripe bananas on the counter that needed to be used up before they went bad. I’ve recently made banana bread, banana muffins, banana cake, and banana cookies. Looking for another way to use up the bananas, I stumbled across a recipe for baked oatmeal that sounded good. I’ve made baked oatmeal before but never with bananas. I decided to give it a shot.

I’m glad I did because it was excellent—warm and slightly gooey, sweet from the bananas, and satisfyingly stomach-filling. We added a side of bacon and glasses of cold milk and called it brunch. I think I’ll probably be calling it midnight snack, too, and possibly breakfast tomorrow morning.

You’ll notice that in this recipe, I specify that several ingredients should be at room temperature before you use them. That’s true of baking in general, actually. Cookies and cakes and breads turn out lighter and fluffier if you start with milk and eggs and butter that are at room-temperature rather than refrigerator-cold. (Except pastry. That’s a whole different ballgame.) But if you’re like me, you rarely plan ahead far enough to leave those things out on the counter long enough to warm them up. I thought I’d share my oops-I-don’t-have-time-to-wait-an-extra-hour tricks.

Butter: You can, of course, just leave your butter out on the counter till it gets nice and soft if you have time. If you’re in a hurry like I generally am, slice the necessary amount of butter into equal-size pieces and arrange on a plate. Microwave for 10-15 seconds on 50% power. (That part is very important. If you use full power on butter it’ll melt fast, and you don’t want melted butter for your baked goods, you just want soft butter.) If you need to, flip all the pieces of butter over and nuke ‘em for another 10-15 seconds on 50% power. It might have melted a little at this point, but that’s okay. As long as most of the butter is still solid, you’re good. Usually 20-30 seconds on half power is long enough for the butter to get soft enough so you can easily beat it. (Or spread it on toast!)

Eggs: This one’s dead easy. If you have time you can leave the desired number of eggs on the counter for a half-hour, or just put them in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes. Done. I usually try to stick the eggs in hot water when I preheat the oven, and by the time I need them they’ve warmed up.

Milk: Again, easy. Measure your milk out in a Pyrex measuring cup and nuke it for 10-30 seconds, depending on the amount, till it’s lukewarm. I used the same trick for the applesauce in this recipe.

Banana-Apple Baked Oatmeal
Adapted from The Sweets Life
Serves 9-12

Notes: I happened to have heavy cream in the fridge that I need to use up, so I used 1/2 cup skim milk and 1/2 cup cream. You could substitute half-and-half or or 2% or soy/almond/rice milk and it should work just fine. I used 1/2 cup sugar because I have a sweet tooth, but the bananas actually added quite a bit of sweetness and I think I could have cut the sugar in half without noticing a difference. (Or you could even use maple syrup or honey, if you like.) I used a Gala apple because that’s what I had on hand, and left the skin on. You could peel it if you are picky about that sort of thing.

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
• 1/4-1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/2 cup applesauce, room temperature
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 cup milk, room temperature
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oatmeal
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 large apple, cored & diced

Pecan Topping (optional)

• 1/2 cup pecans (halves or chopped)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F and grease an 8″x8″x2″ pan.

In a small bowl, combine oatmeal with baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir well. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter, brown sugar and vanilla till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add applesauce and bananas. Mix well.

With stand mixer on low speed, add oatmeal mixture and milk, half at a time. Add apples and stir till combined.

If you want to make the Pecan Topping, stir together the pecans, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon in a small bowl.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and sprinkle the pecan mixture evenly over the top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes. Serve warm.

I had two overripe bananas to use up earlier this week. I didn’t feel like making yet another loaf of bread or batch of muffins, and there’s still a slice of leftover banana cake in the fridge from the last time I baked. So I did a quick search for “banana cookies” online and found a recipe that sounded good. I tweaked it a bit, and the end result was so freaking good that I accidentally ate six cookies while they were still warm from the oven. I think I just found my new go-to recipe for overripe bananas.

Spiced Banana Chocolate-Chip Pecan Cookies
Based on Garret McCord’s Banana Cookies. Makes about 36 cookies.

NOTES: These are best fresh from the oven, so serve them that day if you can. I stored my leftover cookies in an airtight container with wax paper between the layers to prevent the cookies sticking to each other, and although they softened quite a bit they’re still delicious several days later. I imagine these cookies would make fantastic ice-cream sandwiches.*

• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 egg, room-temperature (place in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes)
• 1 c. mashed ripe banana (approx. 2 large bananas)
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 c. whole-wheat flour (or all-purpose, if you don’t have whole wheat)
• 1 tsp. kosher salt (or 1/2 tsp. table salt)
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp. ground allspice
• 1/2 c. chopped pecans (or walnuts)
• 1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and spices. Set aside.
3. In another small bowl, stir together mashed banana and baking soda; let sit for 2 minutes.
4. Cream butter and sugar together, preferably in a stand mixer, until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to beat until well-combined.
5. Add bananas to the butter mixture and stir. Add flour mixture and stir till just combined. Fold nuts and chocolate chips into batter.
6. Spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray or line with parchment paper. Drop tablespoonfuls of cookie dough onto sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until nicely golden brown. Cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then move to wire racks.

*Ice Cream Sandwiches: Spread cookies on a baking sheet with wax paper between layers and stick in freezer for 20 or so minutes. Remove from freezer and spread a scoop of softened ice cream between pairs of cookies. Stick back in freezer till ice cream is firm again. Wrap individual sandwiches in plastic wrap or wax paper and store in a zip-lock bag or air-tight container.

I baked Annalie’s birthday cake (for our family party on her actual birthday) and dyed the frosting to Annalie’s specifications: a strawberry-lemon cake with lemon cream-cheese frosting. I would link to the recipe I used for the cake except I sort of made it up as I went along, combining parts of a few different recipes for the cake. Basically I used this recipe for strawberry cupcakes and added a tablespoon of lemon zest to the batter. Having made those strawberry cupcakes before, though, I knew that I liked the texture of these lemon cupcakes better, so I added a couple of extra eggs to the batter because that was the main difference between the two recipes. The cream cheese frosting I always make is this one, and again I added a couple of teaspoons of lemon zest to it to make it lemony.

When it came time to decorate the cake, I frosted it with the green frosting (”Green, like grass where the daisies grow, Mom!”) and then let Annalie decorate it all by herself. I remember decorating my own cakes when I was a kid and how much fun I had with them. Watching Annalie make her cake beautiful in her own way was just as much fun. And I think she did a pretty good job!

Because Troy had to go to work on Annalie’s birthday, which was also Mother’s Day, we had a late-morning present-opening and cake-cutting before Troy left. But first, the obligatory family birthday portrait:

Wish-making, blowing out the candles, and finally—FINALLY, as far as Annalie was concerned—the present-opening.

One of the gifts Annalie got from me and Troy was two books about ancient Egypt, a subject that has fascinated her for a while now.Once she’d opened them she spent several minutes looking at them, forgetting she had a stack of presents yet to open.

Once the birthday celebration was done, it was time for Troy to go to work. He put on this Homer Simpson shirt with the quote, “I’m here for the beer,” as a sort of joke protest that he had to work on Mother’s Day AND his daughter’s birthday. When he got to work, he sat around for an hour waiting for his boss to get out of a meeting, only to be told, “I was gonna call you last night and tell you that you didn’t have to come in to work today, but I didn’t have your home number. Sorry.” You better believe Troy gave him every phone number and email address he could think of on the spot.

The prettiest stage of homemade pizza, before the colorful veggies and herbs are covered with delicious cheese. (This is basically the same pizza I blogged here, if you’d like the recipe.)

A silly photo taken of some silly kids after Christa’s birthday party, the weekend after Annalie’s. We had fun at the movie party, but unfortunately it’s really hard to take good photos inside a dark movie theater which is where the majority of the party took place. So this is the best photo I got. Also I had just come down with a cold and wasn’t my usual photo-taking self that day.

Our favorite Chinese restaurant in Southern Maryland has fancy new receipts with the dishes’ names on them in Chinese! I thought that was pretty cool.

When Joe came to visit us a while back, he left this shopping bag from Tiffany & Co. for Annalie. His step-grandma had packed him some snacks for the road in it. Joe said, “Who packs chocolate chip cookies and grapes in a Tiffany bag!? I’m leaving this here for Annalie to play with so Kassie doesn’t see it and get hugely disappointed when there’s nothing sparkly for her in it.” Annalie has appreciated it, Joe!

We had brunch one day at a nearby diner. The food was good, the coffee was hot and bottomless, and the atmosphere was awesome.

One of the few days it wasn’t raining when my mom was here, we went downtown to see some sights. My mom took this photo of us in front of a fountain near the Natural History Museum, which I completely love because of the look on Annalie’s face.

These are probably my two favorite photos that I took while we were sightseeing that day. I took the one on the left with a really fast shutter speed (1/2500 second, to be exact) and the one on the right with a relatively slow shutter speed (1/13 second). I don’t really know how to use all the bells and whistles on my fancy D40, but I like playing with the settings I do know how to work. I’m learning, slowly but surely.

One of the sights we hit that day was the Butterfly Pavilion at the Museum of Natural History. Annalie had been wanting to go there for ages and was really excited about it. Which is why it was so heartbreaking that once we got inside, she was freaked out by all the butterflies darting everywhere in the small space. She wanted to like it, and she tried to hold it together, but after about a minute she’d had enough and asked to leave with tears in her eyes. We talked about it afterwards and Annalie said she was nervous about a butterfly landing on her head. We also decided that maybe because there were a lot of other people in the pavilion at the same time, talking and taking pictures, it was a bit overwhelming. We plan to try again on a weekday when it won’t be so busy, and Annalie plans to wear a hat.

We also went to the National Gallery of Art to see their da Vinci painting of Ginevra de’ Benci. Annalie has a kids’ book about Leonardo da Vinci, and in the end it lists all the paintings shown in the book and the galleries that own them. She was completely excited to learn that the National Gallery had one of the paintings, which meant we could go see it in person. Sadly, the day we were there they were doing some work on the gallery where the da Vinci painting is displayed, so it was closed and we didn’t get to see the painting we wanted to see.

Man, now that I think about it, that was two big disappointments in one day for Annalie. Poor kid. You never would have known it to see her, though. She was bummed about the butterflies at first, but then she was happy looking through the observation window and told us excitedly how one butterfly landed really close to where she was looking, so she got to see it up close. And when she found out the gallery with the da Vinci was closed, she just sort of sighed and went back to looking at the map of the gallery. Have I ever mentioned how this kid loves maps?

There’s a bit of a funny story about the National Gallery map, actually. When we first got there we grabbed maps and started trying to figure out where the da Vinci painting would be. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I knew it was a 14th-century(ish) Italian painting, so I opened the map and was puzzling over the various galleries when Annalie said, “Oh, here’s the da Vinci painting right here! It’s on the cover of the map.” And so it was, along with its name and location.

You may have noticed several photos of my mom and Annalie with recognizable buildings and monuments in the background. That’s because we were taking photos with my mom’s postcard in mind. She always sends postcards to various friends and great-nieces and -nephews and godchildren when she’s out of town. Sometimes she buys them 4/$1 at Walgreens, and sometimes I make her a personalized photo card.

It’s kind of funny to me how fast I can make these now. I remember the first couple of years I made Christmas photo cards, it took me a month of tweaking and editing to get it just right. Now I can whip one out in an hour or two.

I tried my hand at smitten kitchen’s braided lemon bread a few weeks back. It wasn’t hard to make, just a bit fiddly with multiple steps. I probably won’t make it again, though. It was tasty, but I didn’t love it.

I did get to make a little mini-loaf from the scraps I cut off before fake-braiding the loaf, though. That was kinda fun.

I’m really starting to think that Annalie is a natural artist. She draws constantly, usually in small notebooks or on index cards when she can get them. And the drawings come so effortlessly to her, like she’s just dashing them off. I wish she would draw more on large pieces of plain white paper because I love so many of her drawings and would like to frame them, and lined paper just doesn’t work that well for framing. But at least I can take photos of the best ones, like this giraffe who is eating something (you can tell ‘cuz his tongue is out) and the pelican and the ocean wave. I keep thinking I need to find some fun art lessons for her. I bet she’d love that.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, Brenda.