The Impromptu Breakfast

Last night, on a whim, I decided to invite my friend Pietro over for breakfast this morning. We usually meet at our local coffee shop, Two Aprons, but I was in the mood for something different. I love this sort of impromptu entertaining because you just have to wing it! That being said, I tend to cook up elaborate schemes and end up needing to relearn my own self-proclaimed passion for flying by the seat of my pants. For example, last night I came up with the idea to bake a coffeecake before I went to bed so it would be ready for the morning. It seemed like a decent plan at the time but a little post-failure introspection revealed that indeed many things seem like a decent plan over a glass of wine. Then I thought I'd just wake up really early and bake banana bread, but as my alarm went off it became clear to me that I need to get a life.

Orchestrating such elaborate and unrealistic proposals only to procrastinate and fold under the pressure seemed worthy of examination. It appears that a small part of me knows what's going on - that masterminding my creativity actually prevents me from being authentically creative. I push the limits of my carefully laid plans so that I'm forced to improvise. My inner teacher is truly brilliant.

So with 40 minutes to spare I decided to make banana muffins. Surely they'd take less time to bake than a whole cake (although I had no idea, which was all part of my devil-may-care attitude). With a twinkle in my eye I proceeded to add a tablespoon of rum and a teaspoon of orange zest to the batter, because why wouldn't someone with minimal baking knowledge add random ingredients to the recipe? I popped them into the oven and was so bold and outrageous in that moment that I decided to go do a load of laundry. The good news is that the muffins were amazing! The bad news is I have no idea how long they were in there. My best guess would be somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. Just keep an eye on them; when they're golden, they're golden! You will love them!

1 cup plus 2 T of flour

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 cup melted butter (I used salted butter because I didn't have any unsalted. If you use unsalted I would add a 1/2 t of salt to the dry ingredients).

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 large, extra ripe bananas

1 t vanilla extract

1 T dark rum

1 t orange zest

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl.

Mix the melted butter and sugar and then add the eggs. Mush the bananas between your fingers (oh what fun!) and throw them in the batter. Add the vanilla, rum and zest and then slowly add the dry ingredients. Fill the cupcake wrappers about 3/4 full and bake for an undetermined amount of time. (The clean toothpick test is always a good way to be certain they're done.)