Going Bananas!

Days 1 & 2 were December 15th and 16th, when I ambitiously took my 250 watt KitchenAid 4.5 Quart mixer out for its first spin.

The goal: Make as many banana breads as possible.

Our oldest daughter is in college and the four others are spread out through elementary, junior,and high school. An informal tally gave me the idea that 20 or more teachers, counselors and bus drivers deserved a scrumptious Thank-You-Bread. A few friends might enjoy a bread or two as well, thus the need for a two-day bread making extravaganza.

With a twenty five pound sack of flower and a case of "old" bananas I finagled for at the local Winn Dixie, I loaded up Betty (KitchenAid's new name) for her trial run. We were both getting broken in to this bold new world of Power Baking, and I must admit that I personally had a few more sputters than Betty. In the first batch (I was making 4 loaves at a time, never exceeding the flour limit) I'm afraid I broke out of the manual's limitation of "only speed 2 and not higher for bread dough." This was not a good idea. When cranked up to level-4, Betty overzealously flung a big splattering of banana-goo at the wall behind her and onto my neck as well. We decided together that sticking to Speed 2 would lead to less sticking-to-the-wall.

In the 2nd batch, I completely forgot to add the sugar. Still, the bread looked good...so 4 mostly-strangers are going to have some very odd tasting banana bread. I was so used to mixing with a hand mixer that I kept shutting off the KitchenAid before I added more ingredients, a completely unnecessary step. Once Betty and I made it to batch 3 and 4, we were whipping out (well, more like mixing out) bread faster than the double-oven could bake them.

Betty held her own and cleaned up beautifully. My only problem is: what to do with the left over bananas?