After finishing my table runner I decided to take the day off. I “read” on the porch for a bit. I knew as soon as I sat down that I would most likely end up napping, but I deserved a break. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining and a lovely breeze. I had a nice nap. I did do some laundry too, so I wasn’t a total slacker.

After my nap, I was motivated to bake. Bill went out before work to get walnuts for me so I felt obligated to make the banana nut bread I had promised. It’s my mother-in-law’s recipe and is pretty easy. I love banana bread. Especially with peanut butter which was a favorite snack of mine growing up. I recollect my mom baking a lot of banana bread in my youth. My bread smelled It smelled so delicious while it was baking! I was very happy with the end result. It has been awhile since I’ve baked and I enjoyed it. I didn’t mind the cleaning up too much either.

Then I decided to make a pineapple mango upside down cake from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. I’ve made it once before and it was very good. Bill had bought a pineapple and mangos for smoothies but wasn’t going to stop me if I used them to make a cake. It’s not a particularly hard cake to make, but it was messy cutting up all the fresh fruit. I used the extra fruit and juice to make smoothies as a pre-dinner snack.

The cake was delicious. I like that the batter uses sour cream and isn’t super sweet which obviously it doesn’t need given the sweet pineapple and mango. I cut the cake into quarters and froze three of the quarters for later. We had a small piece for desert and have a little left for tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to the weekend. It’s going to be in the 90s so I’m glad I got my baking out of the way. Do you have any plans for the weekend?