There's a local, family-owned market that has the reputation for having the best meat around. For the sake of our story, let's just call it Marty's. Ask anyone in a 25 mile radius and they'll tell you that Marty has good meat. That's not all Marty has. He has free bananas! Yep, right by the checkout there's a big box of yellow and black, overripe, almost funky bananas... and they're free for the taking. Free is good when you're on a budget, in fact, it's great. Free bananas are like an economic stimulus package in a peel. I take a few bunches and freeze them. Just thaw, peel and use them in the recipe. We'll be visiting Marty's meat later.
By the way, if you can't get free overripe bananas, ask the grocer to save you some. They usually sell for about 25 cents a pound.
Quick and Easy Banana Cake
4 overripe bananas
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat over to 350 degrees. In a bowl add bananas (peel them first) and sugar. Mix really well. The banana and sugar mixture should be very mushy, almost runny. Add butter and stir to combine. Add egg and vanilla. Mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and fold together using a rubber spatula. Do not over-mix. Scrape batter into a 2-quart rectangular baking dish. Bake until until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean.
