Banana-Nut Muffins and high-school home ec class

Did you take home ec in high school?  I took one home ec class that was split in half, one term cooking, one term sewing, and I only took it because it was mandatory.  It was mandatory for everybody, by the way, in case you're getting any ideas that I went to high school in the 50s and it was only mandatory for girls.  They figured, rightly, that everyone's going to need to know how to cook (and less rightly that everyone's going to need to know how to use a sewing machine - I haven't sewed a damn thing since).  I wasn't against cooking at the time, but I had other interests and took classes in those instead, and I certainly didn't plan to become little Suzy Homemaker, so I felt like this was something I didn't need to take a class in.  I mean, I'd just figure it out on my own, right?

You're probably thinking this is going to turn out to be a lesson in teenage hubris - Our Plucky Heroine gets her comeuppance and needs those priceless lessons from home ec class after all - but you're wrong.  There is literally one thing I remember from that class.  All the really useful stuff I did pick up once I was out on my own.  Thank you, food blogs and the cookbooks of famous chefs!  But that one thing that I do remember from home ec class was something called the "muffin method."  What this referred to was a method of mixing wet ingredients into dry when baking, and it was so named in contrast to another method which I've forgotten entirely.  I guess this way is better for muffins?  I have no idea.  Anyway, the deal is, you make a well in the middle of your dry ingredients, and you pour the wet ingredients into that well.  Then you stir.  That's that.  It's a method.

Want to try it yourself? Want to see just how fulfilling the muffin method can be?  Here are some Banana-Nut Muffins you could experiment on.  I love banana-nut muffins, by the way, and these ones have a walnut and brown sugar crumble on the top.  I made them when my parents are visiting, because it's always good to have portable snacks around.  Not in the small-children sense, like they'll get hungry and cranky and have a meltdown if you don't whip out the goldfish crackers, but they like good food and they like going out and doing stuff, so if you can only have the good food if you sit around at home and wait for me to cook it all day long, that's going to be boring.

These aren't boring!  They're tasty (and secretly kind of healthy) little nuggets of banana-nutty goodness. Make them for your parents!