Almond Banana Bread

Today I had an impromptu day off, and it gave me a chance to see how these strange creatures that walk about the day while the rest of us toil at our workplaces Monday through Friday live. It went a little something like this:

I woke up at 4:30 am and remembered I could sleep in! I flipped off my alarm clock (with my finger, not the button that is) and cozied up to sleep a few more hours. By 5:00 am I was wide awake, thinking about looking at houses, baking rye bread, my career, and whether or not I should make soup or pasta for dinner... I just got up eventually... The rest of the morning was a mishmash of drinking a mango banana smoothie, then consuming several cups of coffee while looking at the pictures of the house we were going to look at online. Next on the agenda was timing a tray of ice cubes in the window to see how long they took to freeze in -20 degrees (32 minutes), contemplating the obese squirrel epidemic in my neighborhood,and going to the gym for an hour. Then we saw the house, and it was adorable! After that  I spent the rest of the day dreaming about what I'll do with a yard, and the undeniable conclusion I came to is that we'll   probably have to get fainting goats. I also realized that I could never be unemployed without plenty of things to keep me busy, because my ADD would drive me INSANE. These details are titillating, I'm sure. Oh yeah, then I made some bomb Almond Banana Bread.

Almond Banana Bread

- 1 1/4 cup sugar

-1/2 cup butter

-2 eggs

-1 1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas

-1/2 cup almond milk

-1 t. vanilla

-2 1/2 cups flour

-1 t. baking soda

-1 t. salt

-1 t. cinnamon

-1/2 t. nutmeg

-1/2 cup slivered almonds

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer beat sugar and room temperature butter until combined. Add eggs, then once combined add mashed bananas and almondmilk. Add dry ingredients and fold until combined. Then fold in almonds and pour into lined muffin tins. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool and devour.

I have made more than my fair share of banana bread in my day, and this was probably my favorite ever, to date. Moist and rich, it tasted grand with the chunks of almond and a drizzle of honey. 

This recipe came to fruition because I had some almond milk and almonds to use up, and while the experimenting always doesn't go so well, this was a great one!