Overindulgent Breakfast Carbs

Cute W loves cinnamon rolls. We’ve always made the pre-packaged kind, which I don’t love. It leaves that gross-tastic coating of fake on my tongue. So for Father’s Day I decided to try to go homemade with this recipe from allrecipes.com. Oh, they were delicious. And not too hard to make. I followed a reviewer’s suggestion and just let my Kitchen Aid mixer keep mixing so that I could skip the kneading, and I put them in a pan as many folks suggested, and left them ready in the fridge overnight before baking them in the morning. Here they are going in:

And here’s a finished cinnamon roll:

We added walnuts–no raisins for Cute W!!–and I had some buttercream frosting on the side. We liked them with a little dab of frosting, although next time I might try a cream cheese frosting. And I’d totally make these again, especially since you can get it ready the night before and then throw them into the oven in the morning.

When I made them I figured that I’d put them in a post, but then I realized that I owe someone our banana bread recipe. This one is from Cute W’s family. The secret is that the bananas have to be “dead,” as Cute W says, or overripe enough that your children will point to the bananas on the counter and say, “Aren’t you going to throw that away?” Once you’ve made the bread a couple of times, they’ll point and say, “Oh, yum! Are those for banana bread?” Incidentally, this is not one of those get-your-kids-to-accidentally-eat-something-nutritious recipes. It’s more like “part of a nutritious breakfast,” like those sugar cereal commercials say, and then you see the bowl surrounded by skim milk, strawberries, kale chips, and salmon.

Cute W’s Grandma’s  Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup butter or shortening
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 bananas, overripe to blackness
• 1 egg
• 1-1/3 cups flour
• 1 scant teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• chocolate chips, optional

Directions:

• Cream butter and sugar together.
• Mix in bananas, eggs, flour, and soda.
• Stir in walnuts and chocolate chips.
• Put it in a greased loaf pan and bake at 300° for c. 40 minutes.