It’s the week after exams, and we should all take the time to decompress and eat some comfort food. Try baking this easy banana-walnut bread recipe! It’s fun to make, and perfect for breakfast.

You will need:

• 1 3/4 cups of flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
• 1/3 cup butter or other shortening
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of banana

First, combine your dry ingredients. Baking powder, baking soda, flour, chopped walnuts, salt, and sugar should all go in a large mixing bowl. Mix thoroughly.

Next, you’ll want to cut your butter into the dry ingredients. Don’t melt it! Use knives to chop the butter into small pieces. This mixes the butter into the dry ingredients without making the dough tough and dense.

Next, combine your wet ingredients. Lightly beat your eggs, just enough to break up the yolk.

Then, in a separate bowl, mash your bananas. This recipe calls for 1 cup of mashed bananas, but I usually just wing it and mash three. Extra bananas means extra dough, after all! However, don’t go overboard—if you add too much banana, then you have to add egg to compensate, and it all gets complicated.

When your bananas are mashed and your eggs are slightly beaten, mix the two together before adding the mixture to your dry ingredients. This is the most disgusting part of the recipe (Trust me, I tried it on my sister.), but only because banana and eggs really don’t look right when they’re mixed up. The end result is delicious, though, so soldier through!

Now, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Here’s the tricky part: you want to mix it enough so that everything blends together, but you don’t want to over-mix the dough and end up with banana-flavored bricks instead of muffins. Try folding the dough instead of stirring it. All you want is the dry mixture to get wet.

Now, you can cook your bread in two ways! If you cook it in a loaf, bake it for 60 minutes at 350^o F, or, if you’re making muffins, bake them for 30 minutes at 350^o F. Either way, grease the bottom of the pan in which you are baking the dough. For muffins, spray a little bit of canola spray in the muffin wrappers/muffin tin. It’ll help you get them out later. Fill each hole about 2/3 of the way with batter. These babies rise like nobody’s business. If you want, decorate your loaf or muffins with nuts on top.

Test if your muffins are done with the ever-trustworthy toothpick test. If it comes back dry, your muffins/loaf is ready!