A bunch of overly ripe bananas, a quart of buttermilk that needed to be used, and a few simple Valentine gifts that I wanted to share. Yes, I am aware of the endless amount of great banana bread recipes that are everywhere. Believe me, I have tried so many and have filed so many. Today, I found this one in the category of best banana breads by Allrecipes.com. It called for the ingredients that I had on hand including buttermilk. Two of my daughters...the testers from my kitchen, classified this recipe as "the best banana bread that I have made up to this point in my life" category, when they tasted it this morning. I doubled the recipe, using all of my extra ripe bananas, and baked them into a variety of products, which will serve me well on this Valentine's Day weekend.

Tiny heart muffins with whipped cream cheese icing, and tiny sugar hearts from Michaels, baked in the following red muffin...

...form, (or whatever you call it) by Wilton. I like the size and the depth of these muffins. When they are cooled, they are so easy to remove. The size is perfect for the little taste I prefer my sweets to be. All is needed with it is my cup of coffee.

Tiny muffins baked in my Martha Stewart extra large muffin pan. It bakes 24 mini muffins at once. I think I purchased it at KMart a few years ago.

Whipped cream cheese icing from Pillbury, put in a freezer bag with a tiny tip cut off, was how I unprofessionally decorated these mini muffins. Adding a tiny candy heart from the Dollar Tree bag of candy I had purchased. White plate was found on the clearance shelf at Marshall's Homegoods for 1.oo.

Now, just in case you have overly ripe bananas, some buttermilk or vanilla yogurt you need to use, and a few people's lives that you would like to bless this Valentine Day weekend, here is the recipe I used today;

2 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup of buttermilk or vanilla yogurt

1/2 cup of vegtable oil

1 cup mashed ripe bananas

1 tea. vanilla(what I added although it was not called for in the recipe)

1 1/2 cups of white sugar

1 3/4 cups of flour

1 tea. baking soda

1/2 tea. salt

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts(optional, but never for me since I really like walnuts)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Blend together eggs, buttermilk, mashed bananas and vanilla.

Sift together sugar, flour, baking soda, salt. Add to the above mixture. Stir in walnuts. Mix batter together well, and bake in any type of Pam sprayed pan that you wish.

I always bake my breads on the shelf that is in the middle of my oven. Also, I think that the 325 degree oven this calls for, helps this bread to stay moist and not dry out as some banana breads tend to do.

Whether you use this recipe or any recipe. Whether you bake anything or not. Just remember that Valentine's Day can tend to be a lonely, and somewhat difficult day for many people to go through. Maybe, in some small way you can think of someone's day that you may make a bit brighter, in whatever way you choose to do.