I like to buy bananas for snacks, but my husband and I only like them when they’re green. Once they get a few spots of brown, it’s all over. So, I’m often left with two or three overripe bananas left in the fruit bowl at the end of the week. And I always try my hardest to do something with this sickly sweet things. It’s easy to run out of fresh ideas though. I mean, really, there is only so much you can do with bananas.

I can’t even remember how I got the idea to spice up banana muffins with a chai infusion. In any event, I went through several different trial runs before deciding the recipe below was the best one. I could really taste the chai spices, but they didn’t overwhelm the banana, and vice versa. As for the pistachios, they are very mild, but once in a while, you get this jolt of pistachio taste which is wonderful. You can certainly use the traditional walnuts, or pecans or hazelnuts for that matter, if you don’t have pistachios.

The core of this recipe was borrowed from Better Homes and Gardens. I tried Joy’s, too, but the chai spice got lost in that batch.

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 ½ tsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. cloves
¼ tsp. cardamom
¼ tsp. ginger
1/8 tsp. black pepper
½ cup milk
1 black tea bag
1/3 cup cooking oil
2 large bananas, mashed
1/3 cup pistachios, chopped

Guidelines:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

In a small saucepan, or in the microwave, heat the milk until warm but not scalding. Add the tea bag and let steep until the milk is a creamy brown color.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, and black pepper. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture.

In the center of the well, beat the egg. Add the oil and the tea infused milk. Stir all ingredients together until just moistened. Batter should be slightly lumpy.

Gently fold in the mashed bananas and pistachios. I like to leave my bananas on the chunky side, so I don’t mash mine until they look like puree, but however you like them is fine.

Grease muffin cups or line with paper baking cups. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool briefly, then remove muffins from the pan and let cool on a wire rack.

Adjust recipe for high altitude cooking.

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: