AbbieBabble

I know I was just extolling the virtues of having access to a kitchenaid, but last night I was reminded of the joys of baking with nothing more than a wooden spoon.

I was craving banana bread when I went grocery shopping last Sunday (I love banana bread), so once I finally had some free time after the birthday cakes of doom project, I had all the ingredients. I wanted to use my family's favorite recipe, which comes from a worn-out booklet of children's recipes that my mother ordered for fifty cents from Gold Medal Flour at least five years before she had any children, but I couldn't get her on the phone to read it to me, and I couldn't find it anywhere online. Instead, I went to that bastion of deliciousness, Smitten Kitchen.

Unlike a lot of the other recipes I found online, this one doesn't call for the butter and sugar to be creamed together. Neither does my family's recipe. Instead, I always use the biggest mixing bowl and my favorite wooden spoon to stir all the ingredients together by hand. Using a wooden spoon always makes me feel earth-mothery and old-fashioned, like I'm cooking the way Laura Ingalls Wilder and family always cooked.

And cleaning a wooden spoon is way easier than cleaning all the crevices in a kitchenaid.

Happy Friday, friends!

I hope your weekends are full of homemade baked goods and not too much cleanup.