There's always honey in the banana bread (butter).

Happy summer, everyone!

My employer has a number of great perks - employee discounts and sample sales (we're in the retail business), summer Fridays, and a great snack closet, among others. The snack closet is full of all kinds of sin -- fruit snacks, chips, and my personal weakness, Cheetos. In an effort to round out our snacking habits, some members of my department recently got together to organize a periodic fruit delivery (yay!). This past week, the organizer sent out his usual PSA that the delivery had arrived:

"More fruit has arrived and we have plenty for everyone now! The strawberries will probably only be good for two days so don't be shy. Same for the peaches. We have LOTS of bananas and they're easy to eat without a mess at your desk, so enjoy. :)"

At some point in my life, I developed an extreme dislike for bananas. I think it was a particularly bad experience with a particularly green banana, but I have never cared for them since. Nick had a similar such trauma in his childhood, so you'll probably never find one at our table.

However, walking past our fruit delivery, I noticed the abundance of uneaten bananas and offered to take them home to make banana bread so they could fulfill their destiny (waste not, want not, right?).

I have to admit, even though I'll be getting most of my life's potassium from raisins, even I quite enjoyed this recipe (a modified version of one by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, of one of my childhood TV series, Too Hot Tamales)...and the bread was gone in a (banana) split.

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Banana Bread

(lacking a second loaf pan, I made half the recipe as muffins and half as a loaf)

2 c granulated sugar

2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter, room temperature

4 large eggs

6 ripe bananas

2 T milk

2 t ground cinnamon

4 c all-purpose flour

2 t baking powder

2 t baking soda

2 t salt

Crunchy topping:

2/3 c brown sugar

1/4 c flour

1/4 t cinnamon

2 T butter

Preheat the oven to 325*F. Butter two 9" x 5" x 3" loaf pans. (Or, if you're doing muffins, line muffin tins - one loaf was roughly 12 regular-sized muffins.)

Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a small bowl, mash the bananas, milk, and cinnamon with a pastry cutter. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the banana mixture to the butter-and-sugar mixture, and stir until combined. Add dry ingredients, mixing just until flour disappears.

Cut 2 T butter into the brown sugar, 1/4 c flour, and 1/4 t cinnamon, until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

Pour batter into prepared pans and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar topping. Bake 1 hr., until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Set aside to cool on a rack for 15 min. Remove bread from pan, let cool on a rack, and slice after completely cool. (Muffins take about 20 minutes.)

Serve to hungry coworkers with cinnamon honey butter, and graciously accept your promotion.