Meghan and Harry are having a BABY and also she and I both made banana bread this week
I haven't been sleeping that well lately (stress about multiple books as well as the in process downfall of America will do that to a person) so I've been trying that thing for better sleep hygiene or whatever where I don't look at my phone when I wake up in the middle of the night, and that's all well and good but it meant it took HOURS for me to find out that Meghan and Harry announced that they're having a baby! Let me tell you, I woke up on Monday morning to many many text messages. And lucky for us all, they're currently on tour in Australia and New Zealand and Fiji, so they're out and about every day and we get lots of happy gazing and videos like this one to enjoy while everything else in the news is scary or terrible. (I get my Meghan and Harry news from...many many sources, but my two favorites are the Mad About Meghan blog and of course, the Fug Girls).
People, The Proposal is less than two weeks away! I can't wait for all of you to be able to read this book, and I hope I get to meet lots of you at my upcoming events! Reminder: I'll be at the Texas Book Festival in Austin next weekend, and then after that I'll have events in Houston, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston, and New York. Come out and see me! Here's a graphic with all of the details, and my events page on my website has links to all of the bookstores and their event pages! And local friends, I'll be at a Litquake event in Oakland tonight, October 19! At 6:30 at the Oakland Public Library main building at 125 14th Street, please come!
Okay so I promise I was already going to make banana bread this week before Meghan made it in Australia (I ALSO bake a lot while I have jet lag, so that felt very relatable to me). I asked on Twitter last week for favorite banana bread recipes, because I had a bunch of brown bananas that I knew I needed to do something with soon. A friend recommended Smitten Kitchen's recipe, and I'm here to tell you it's great and easy and you can add all sorts of things to it (chocolate chips would be great with this one, though I didn't add them this time). One bowl recipes are excellent, and even better when they turn out well. I tinkered with the spices some, so my additions are below, but you can use whatever you like and have on hand.
Very Adaptable Banana Bread
3 large or four medium size ripe bananas, smashed and blended well (I used 4)
1/3 cup (75 grams) melted salted butter
3/4 cup (145 grams) light brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon bourbon (optional)
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1 and 1/2 cups (190 grams) flour
Preheat the oven to 350 F, and grease a 4x8 inch loaf pan very well. Mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl, and then mix in the sugar, egg, vanilla, and bourbon, and then the spices. (This is when I again tell you all how much easier a cooking scale makes baking, not just for how much more accurate weight measurements are than volume measurements, but because with a cooking scale, you don't have to measure! Just set your bowl on top of the scale and throw stuff in until you're at the right weight, tare the scale to get back to 0, and go on to the next ingredient!) Add in the flour last, and mix as gently as you can -- you want the flour just combined, while still having no lumps of flour in the batter. Pour the mixture into the greased loaf pan, and bake in the center of the oven for 50 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack and remove from the pan when it's cool enough.
Enjoy!
Have a great weekend!
Jasmine
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