This Recipe Is Bananas!

Yum.

After posting my first post related to something I baked, I discovered one of the advantages of such a post: lots of photos, and we all know that people love to look at photos, which is why those look-what-I-wore-today fashion blogs are so popular.

One of the disadvantages of such a post: lots of photos, because it's sometimes a pain in the ass to stopping every step of the alchemy that is baking in order to photograph the evidence.

In my previous baking post I discussed making Rice Krispies treats using Cocoa Krispies, a recipe that almost any idiot can pull off. Today I'd like to tell you about another treat that I made only twice in my life, but each instance resulted in a bit of banana-y bliss.


HERE IS THE NITTY AND THE GRITTY
You can just skip this entire post and read the recipe for yourself right here, among other places. But I know you've come here for my "wit," not just how to make a dessert that will make you (and by that I mean me) fatter than you (that is, I) already are/am.

Here's what the ingredients look like when you lay them out for a photograph:

I normally don't arrange my ingredients on the counter like this as if my kitchen were organizing a class photo. I just grab what I need, only to discover at the very end that I'm out of, say, baking soda. Anyway, you'll notice that the bananas are very spotty. Recipes that call for bananas require that they be very ripe. This is handy because the only bananas I will eat are at the green-10-seconds-ago stage. I don't care for squishy fruits, and prefer my pears and apples as hard as moon rocks, so I always have an excuse to whip up some banana-based recipe.

I've jumped ahead a bit here: this recipe is called "banana mini-morsel bars," and I saw the recipe on the back of a bag of Toll House mini chips. I usually make banana bread with my old bananas, but for the life of me I don't know where the hell my loaf pan is, so I decided to try this recipe, which requires a jelly roll pan (or, in my case, a cookie sheet with a slight lip).

So, yeah. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. My kids like tasting dry ingredients, and for some reason they consider plain, raw flour a delicacy. This is a probably a warning about some kind of deficiency of the nutritional or mental sort, but I've chosen to ignore it for now.

This is what the sugars, butter, egg, and vanilla look like right before they get creamed. This is a good representation of how I felt on Sunday morning: all the different ideas I had, the things I wanted to do, the writing I wanted to accomplish. The butter represents my screenplay, the brown sugar a non-fiction book I need to begin, the vanilla a song idea, the white sugar some reading, and the egg...a nap.

But Mrs. The Anthony Show had a baby shower to attend and Mother of The Anthony Show (i.e., my go-to for babysitting) was at a bridal shower (note: these showers were not held for the same person, though it would have been awesomely scandalous if it were), so I was stuck in the house with the kids for a number of hours. By the time Mrs. The Anthony Show returned, my brains resembled the result of creaming these ingredients:

This is your brain on kids, folks, but I digress. You need to mash up those bananas, and if they're very ripe, it's pretty easy. I put them in a plastic bag and mush away so I don't get my hands all gunky.

Daughter of The Anthony Show lent a hand with the banana-mushing. Yes, she remained in her pajamas the whole day; it was that kind of afternoon.

The dough will look like this after the bananas have been mixed in.

Once you add and mix in the dry ingredients, the dough will resemble something edible. Don't overmix the dough because it does something to the flour I forget but it's scientific/chemical and has something to do with gluten and your dough will come out too gummy.

I helped my daughter add the mini chips. Fortunately, I was able to satisfy her with a small handful of chips rather than dealing with a "One for you, one for me" situation.

You have to fight the urge to just bury your head in this tasty dough like a horse sucking on a feedbag.

When you scrape the dough into your prepared pan, which I first covered with aluminum foil, it'll just sit there like the evidence that someone had a little too much of a good time with your liquor cabinet last night, so spread it with your spatula.

See? The recipe calls for a cooking time of 20 to 30 minutes, which is a range I find rather wide. I did 25 minutes, and my tester came out clean.

Voilà. If I kept it in longer, it might have browned a little more, but the pictures I've seen tell me that it's not supposed to brown like chocolate-chip cookies. I'm assuming the bananas are keeping the treat close to the color of the raw dough.

For the sake of this photo, I added the optional powdered sugar. I tend to avoid powered sugar, even though I love it, because when I work with merely a teaspoon of it my kitchen begins to resemble a Harlem cocaine factory run by Frank Lucas. To dab a smidgen of sugar, I dipped a small fork into the bag, held the fork over the bar, and gently tapped it. The sugar rains down like manna from heaven. I'll bet if powdered sugar came down instead of whatever bread-like substance "manna" is, Moses would have had an easier time keeping everyone in line.

WOW, THAT WAS FUN
There is absolutely no reason you can't make these bars, unless you hate bananas. I work with someone who doesn't like bananas, and though I shouldn't be surprised, since bananas have a strong smell and taste, I find the whole idea of banana-aversion fascinating. Who doesn't like bananas? (I mean, besides my co-worker) It's like saying you don't like corn or cheese or ice cream.

SHE ALSO HATES GWEN STEFANI
I have bombarded this poor co-worker with a banana-bunch-full of questions related to her contempt of the Cavendish, and she's been a good sport.

Apparently, there's no mystery to solve — she wasn't locked in a closet with nothing to eat but bananas, she didn't humiliate herself by slipping on a banana peel — she just doesn't like bananas. I should be more understanding, because there are a number of foods that I refuse to eat, but I will continue to ask questions about her dislike of this almost universally beloved fruit.

She's probably too young to remember The Muppet Show when it first ran, but maybe this is what turned her off to our curvy yellow friends:

I wonder how she feels about brown bears bearing bad jokes and even worse musical timing...