Temari Rabbit 2-Tier Bento #50

Slices of homemade mini banana bread loaf (recipe below), a cup of Brummel & Brown, two mellowcreme pumpkins (Halloween is coming!), cucumber slices, snow peas, a cup of yogurt ranch, a berry cup, and a stuffed egg topped with paprika.

Someone who saw me eating this lunch said, "It's pretty, but it doesn't look like you eat enough vegetables." Sigh. I'm going to avoid the rant I initially wrote out and deleted, because you were reading along to find the recipe for banana bread. Let's get to it.

As a single person, I would never have enough extra overripe bananas hanging around for most banana bread recipes. So I have used America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2010 sometimes, because it at least only requires about 1 banana. But as much as I love America's Test Kitchen, sometimes they overthink it, and I just don't always have the energy to take all their steps and wash all their dishes. So this is my version of their scaled-down recipe. It makes 1 standard mini loaf, 12 mini muffins, or two of these mini-mini loaves (which are kind of like jumbo muffins).

Banana Bread
Serves about 2-4

1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
About 1 small banana, mashed (I used 3/4 of a large banana; aim for about 1/4 cup of banana but don't stress if it's over or under a little)
1 egg
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted (allow to cool a little so it doesn't scramble the egg)
1 tablespoon sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray baking pans with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Stir the wet ingredients together in another bowl until smooth. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined. (Don't overmix. It'll be lumpy and you'll see a streak of flour or two.)

Divide the batter among your prepared baking pans/dishes. Tap on the counter to smooth the batter out a little.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes for mini loaves. Cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then flip out on a wire rack to finish cooling.

I'm not going to say you can't eat it now, because, well, look at it! But it'll slice a little easier if you let it cool all the way.

And with a little Brummel & Brown, with a glass of milk, this is the sort of thing I eat for breakfast, where nobody is around to judge me for the total lack of veggies in a single meal.