Things That Get Baked In the Night

I bake things late at night…

It’s a habit that college has perfected for me.

Baking is the best way to ignore homework, I’ve discovered. You not only get the chance to forget that you have ten assignments due, but you get food out of the deal. Win-win.

Yet…I’m always nervous when I’m making something new with gluten-free ingredients. As someone who has a lot of practice baking with regular flour, gluten-free baking occasionally makes me question my lifestyle choices.

Muffins are usually safe to experiment with; they usually turn out at least edible, if not tasty. Banana bread is similar to muffins. Must be safe, right?

It’s taken me about three months to actually attempt gluten-free banana bread, due to my fear of ending up with some monstrosity of baking that hangs out on my counter taking up residence until it’s appropriately old enough to feed to the garbage can. My gluten-free-baking-anxiety disappeared long enough for me to decide – at 8 o’ clock at night – to make banana bread. There was this miraculous recipe hiding out on my favorite website – Pinterest – that miraculously used the exact number of overripe bananas that were languishing on my counter. Pinterest is a girl’s best friend, and this recipe is magic.

I checked the oven approximately every two minutes to make sure that the experimental loaf wasn’t taking over my oven, but in the end, the success of gluten-free banana bread has made my entire apartment smell like a bakery. That scrumptious photo at the beginning of this post is what I have to look forward to for breakfast. Possibly for lunch, too. (There are perks to being a single college student…I get the whole loaf to myself.)

Cheers!