Stella's Banana Brownies

A wonderful woman and mom named Stella gave me this recipe, oh two years ago? It is my go-to recipe when I just must have brownies and now I am sharing it with you, all 5 of my readers. :)

Once you get the hang of the recipe, it can be whipped up in 5-10 minutes and in the oven to cook. Upshot is yummy brownies within an hour.

Stella's Banana Brownies

¼ C butter
¼ C bananas, mashed (I use 2 bananas)
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
½ c all-purpose flour
6 T cocoa
¼ t baking powder
1/8 t salt

Melt the butter in the microwave or on the stove and put it in a large mixing bowl. Add the mashed bananas and stir. Then add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Be careful about adding the eggs if the butter is still hot because it might slightly cook the eggs. I will not tell you how I know that.

In a separate bowl or very large measuring cup, mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Then dump it all into the wet ingredients and mix well.

Pour into a (greased) 9x9 pan and bake on 350 for 30-35 minutes or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean. I usually skip the greasing the pan step but these also don't usually last long enough for other people to see them.

To add a minute amount of nutrition I use whole wheat flour instead of white and I think that turns out fine.

Yum!

My Kid Has Heart

Today my 5 year old had her third soccer football practice ever. We show up and the only kids on her team that made it are two boys that are at least a year older who also have more experience with the game. They ran some drills, practice passing and kicking and other fundamentals and the boys clearly had an experience advantage over her.

My big girl really played hard though. And besides a purple Hello Kitty hair tie, she was dressed entirely in pink. I loved watching her run after the ball to kick it in the goal and afterward when I asked her how she thought she did, she told me. She said, "I was great today."

I couldn't have been prouder of her.

Long Time, No Post

School is out for the summer and then S starts up with second year kindergarten in 5 weeks. I could see the look of joy on the forest kindergarten teacher's face when I wished her a happy vacay. lol

Summer break here is only 5 weeks and they spread the rest of break around the school year so kids have plenty of down time. Good for the kids but not so good for the mom. This is just one of Switzerland's many sexist policies designed at keeping moms at home where they belong. A friend was telling me that she was applying for jobs and the employer didn't want to hire a PT employee, which BTW is very common here, but at the same time didn't think she could take care of her school age kids properly and work.

In a lot of ways, it is still the 1950s in Switzerland.