The Baker is in

I had some overripe bananas in the kitchen, and decided they'd be perfect for some family bonding time.

"Wanna make banana bread?" I asked Mark, who excitedly answered yes. He loves to eat, which means he loves to cook by default.

"OK, what ingredients do we need?" I asked, flipping open my cookbook.

"Um, bananas," Mark answered, grabbing a bunch. He started singing the Rihanna song, changing her name to fit our activity. "Ba-nana...what's my name, ba-nana."

"Good," I said. "What else do we need?"

"Spam," he said, and I did a double-take.

"Banana and Spam bread?" I gagged. "That's GROSS!"

"I meant Pam," he corrected. "For the pan. Not Spam!" We both giggled at that.

"Um, we also need..." He scratched his head. Apparently, he has no idea what's in banana bread.

I gave him the recipe and he collected all the remaining ingredients. He put together the wet ingredients, and got an impromptu lesson on using the hand mixer when he lifted it too high out of the bowl and almost sprayed the whole kitchen in an eggy, sugary coating. Then he set that bowl aside and took great pleasure in mashing the bananas.

"Die, bananas, die!" he cursed them, and I reminded him we weren't really trying to kill anything here.

"You've gotta put a little love in your food," I said, forgetting my audience, who happens to be a rowdy 11-year-boy. He nodded earnestly, then went back to shouting, "Die, bananas!"

"What's next?" I asked.

"The flour," Mark answered. "We have to shift the flour."

"Sift the flour," I corrected.

"Whatever," he replied. "It goes in the flour shifter."

"How much do we need?" I asked.

"One-half cup," he said.

"OK. We're doubling the recipe, so we need twice that much," I reminded him. "What's one-half plus one-half?"

"One-fourth cup," he said, measuring it out. Man, two days off school and his math skills deteriorate!

"No, you have two halves," I said slowly. "If you have put two halves of a circle together, what do they make?"

"Oooooh!" he said, nodding his head. "They make two fourths!"

I sighed.

"It doesn't have to be perfect," Mark reassured me. "We can taste it as we go along and just add stuff. Cooking's not exact."

"But baking is!" I snorted. "You can't improvise with baking like you can with cooking--you have to follow the directions exactly."

"Yeah," he conceded. "Like, if I put in too much baking soda, then the bread will blow up!"

I saw the glee on his face and made a mental note to closely monitor how much baking soda he added.

Once the flour was good and "shifted," we poured in the wet ingredients. Mark mixed it for all of two seconds, until his arm hurt, then he handed the spoon back to me.

"I'm exhausted," he complained. But he found his energy once again upon remembering we had a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard.

"Let's pour the whole bag in!" he said, licking his lips.

"Just a few," I cautioned. "It's banana bread, not chocolate bread."

He glared at me, and I reminded him that when he grows up, he can make his banana bread however he wants to.

"I will," he said, under his breath. I'm sure his bread will contain all chocolate, and little to no bananas.

We finally finished mixing and filled the loaf pans, putting them in the oven. An hour later, we had two beautifully browned loaves. I'll give you one guess as to which one we lit into first.

"These chocolate chips are soooooo good!" Mark sighed, chocolate smeared on his face. He smiled contentedly.

I smiled, too. And realized the next time we bake, I won't bother with banana bread. I'll skip the middle man and just bake chocolate-chip cookies.

Turns out that's what Mark wanted anyway!