A couple of brown bananas are sitting on the windowsill.

“How about banana bread?”

Banana bread takes an hour to bake. It’s after 8 pm.

“How about banana muffins?”

So I collect my supplies for banana muffins: muffin pan, butter, sugar, egg, flour, leavening, disher, but wait, we are out of muffin papers.

“Couldn’t you bake them without liners?”

No matter how well I grease the cups, the muffins always seem to stick. What to do? Well, I do have plenty of parchment paper. Why not, since parchment paper liners in cake pans work so well in releasing cakes. I cut the paper into 4-inch squares and roughly folded them so that they would fit into the round cups. When I scooped in the muffin batter, the parchment paper took the shape of the cup. After baking, we dove right into the muffins (the aroma prevents us from waiting for them to cool), and to my surprise, the impromptu parchment cups released much better than the muffin papers (cake always clings to the fluted liners even when carefully peeled). There was no trace of cake left on the parchment paper. Necessity is the mother of invention!

Oh, and I made one more substitution: since we were out of cream cheese, I used goat cheese in the icing. Really delicious; I may never bother with cream cheese again. The tang of goat cheese pairs so well with the sweet banana. I must try my new icing on carrot cake.

Banana Bread with Goat Cheese Icing

for the cake:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Mix together the butter and sugar until very creamy and smooth (I used a food processor). Add the eggs, bananas, and rum and mix until smooth. Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Fold into the butter batter until just mixed in. Using a #12 disher, scoop the batter into 12 parchment-lined muffin cups. Bake at 350 until set, about 15 minutes. Let cool and then ice.

For the icing:

• 2 ounces goat cheese, softened
• 2 ounces butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Mix together the cheese, butter, and sugar until creamy (I used a food processor). Use a 4-inch icing spatula to spread on top of the muffins.