Regular banana bread is good, sure, but don’t you want to spice it up sometimes? Give it a twist? Embellish it for the holidays without a lot of fuss? Then I have an easy solution for you. With the addition of cardamom, and the swapping of walnuts for toasted hazelnuts, you have a different—fancier—version of the favorite stand-by. Moist and heady with taste, this bread is perfect for holiday breakfasts or homemade gift baskets. Best of all, it will literally only take you three minutes longer to prepare. You can’t go wrong.

If you have a favorite banana bread recipe, try substituting (or adding) the spice and nuts it includes for cardamom and hazelnuts. Otherwise try the basic recipe below, which I’ve adapted from The Joy of Cooking.

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups unbleached white flour
¾ tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cardamom
5 ½ tbsp. butter + a sliver for greasing the loaf pan
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 large bananas, overly ripe to the point of blackened
½ cup hazelnuts

Let the butter stand at room temperature until softened. Remove the eggs from the refrigerator about 15 minutes before you begin.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Lightly butter a glass loaf pan.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and ground cardamom.

In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the two eggs and beat until smooth. Add the flour mixture and stir until well blended.

Squeeze the bananas out of their peels directly into the batter. Squish into the mixture with the back of a fork, leaving small chunks of banana.

Spread the hazelnuts on a small baking sheet and put them in the oven for 2-3 minutes, until just warm and aromatic. Chop and add to mixture, folding until just combined.

Bake for 50-55 minutes. Remember, the key to moist bread is to not let it dry out in the oven!

Can you name all the sweets you’ve bought for you, or your kid’s, lunch? Cookies are the good ole stand-by. Chips O’hoy, Mother’s Iced Oatmeal, Oreo. Remember E.L. Fudge? Those elf shaped treats with creamy chocolate filling? Or Grasshoppers? What else? Help me out here…

Venturing out of cookiedom, what about Little Debbie treats? Oatmeal Crème Pies, Star Crunch Cosmic Snacks, Swiss Cake Rolls, or, my personal favorite, Nutty Bars. In middle school, a friend and I went through a phase of buying school lunches because they’d added a salad bar. We’d combine our two dollars, buy one heaping plate of salad to share, then buy two Nutty Bars afterwards. Those little wafers with peanut butter filling and a chocolate coating remained my favorite treat for years. And years. I ate them for snacks in college, holed up in the library between classes, studying furiously because I worked thirty + hours a week on top of a full-time course load. Ah, yes, Nutty Bars and apples sustained me in that broke, sleep deprived, fifteen hundred miles away from home, and running on empty way. But that’s another story…

And who could forget the world of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and HoHos, among the other Hostess snacks? This is a line I never got into. I’m sure I’ve eaten a Twinkie. Who hasn’t right? But I couldn’t tell you what a Ding Dong or HoHo tastes, or even looks, like. Did they have these in Colorado in the 80s? I’d say I feel deprived, except I don’t. I’ve never been a good sweets eater. In fact, my favorite “cookie” is the Fig Newton. No joke. My husband only likes them because they are filling, but me? Give me whole wheat raspberry or the original, and I’m good to go.

But eschew all of those! The point of these brown bag lunch explorations is to not buy processed foods. So this week, instead of all the above mentioned snacks, try this out: