Rainy Day Baking

"The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking: love, for those you are cooking for." -Sophia Loren

I LOVE a rainy day! Unless it's ruining some sort of outdoor plans or something...I'll take a rainy day ANY DAY! Except of course when it's been rainy for a week straight! Coming off of a drought here in our area, if was definitely needed. However, home with the kids during a series of rainy days gets a little, well cumbersome. The girls and I had watched movies, done puzzles, drawn a bazillion pictures, played on the computer, made beaded necklaces, broke out the paint, napped, and even had each girl start their very own scrapbooks. What is left to do? Despite the fact that Nic isn't usually too fond of desserts and had recently gone back into his really, really healthy eating habits (as opposed to just the normal healthy eating habits he possesses), I decided we should bake him and the rest of the fire station some banana bread. I wanted to get a little crazy with the banana bread and scoured the Internet for a jazzed up recipe. I finally found one with peanut butter and chocolate chips. It even had wheat flour and with the protein from the peanut butter, and if I used dark chocolate chips, Nic couldn't resist the "healthiness" of it! Once the girls figured out we'd be doing a little baking, Kristin jumped up and down squealing while ordering Kaylee to go get both stools. Kristin immediately asked if they could wear their baking hats and outfits. What baking hats and outfits? She then pulled me by my hand into the laundry room and pushed back several miscellaneous articles of clothing hanging up to reveal their pink princess "baking hats and outfits" (really just aprons). I had purchased them on clearance at Target at least a year ago and I had COMPLETELY forgotten all about them. How funny that Kristin remembered them! Especially since I let them cook with me often and they've never before been mentioned. So after scrubbing our hands, the girls got all dressed up in their baking hats and aprons and hopped up on the stools. I kept repeating to myself in my head that it doesn't matter about the mess they may make, I was just going to let them have at it! They took turns back and forth with each task, with Kaylee even cracked one perfectly shell-free egg into the mix! We finally finished and we ended up making four mini loaves of peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread! By the time it was done baking, it was dinner time so the girls thought it was even more special that they got to sample their sweet cooking right before dinner! After a girls only dinner date of pizza, we took two loaves to the fire station. Nic couldn't resist our yummy goodness and even shared just a tiny bit with the rest of the guys. I'm definitely filing the recipe away for another rainy day of baking! And this time maybe I'll remember the baking outfits!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Recipe

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 Tbs. baking powder

3/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas

1 cup milk

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease loaf pan(s) or muffin tins.

2. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, salt, cinnamon.

3. In another bowl, combine mashed bananas, milk, peanut butter, vanilla, and egg. Add to flour mixture, stirring until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Bake 50-55 mins. (give it a check at about 40 mins.) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.