BANANA AND CARAMEL MUFFINS

 

With some bananas going past their best in the fruit bowl I looked for something different from my usual cake recipes to make use of them.

I settled on a recipe in one of my favourite books, a W.I. publication called "cakes" by Liz Herbert where they are called "Banana Banoffee Muffins".

I would normally have used some Bonne Maman caramel but have recently had trouble getting hold of it.  The French supermarkets I usually frequent no longer seem to stock it.

I mostly use it for baking - for example see here.

Consequently I have bought other brands instead.

They are not quite the same!

The caramel did sink to the bottom of the muffins as warned in the recipe!

They were however, utterly delicious!  Dead easy to make, wickedly sweet and very bananary, they were a hit with all who tried them and I still have four in the freezer for a future treat.  Yum !!!

Ingredients

225g plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g golden caster sugar

2 medium ripe bananas, peeled and mashed

2 eggs, beaten

4 tblsp sour cream or crème fraîche

½ tsp vanilla extract

80g butter, melted and cooled

10 tsp caramel spread/jam or tinned caramel

Method

First, have the butter melted and set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan /gas mk 5.  Put 10 muffin cases into a muffin tin.  (My mixture actually made 11.)

Sift the flour, BP and bicarb into a large bowl.  Stir in the sugar.

Make a well in the centre and add the bananas, eggs, crème fraîche, butter and vanilla.  Fold or mix together until just combined.

Spoon the mixture equally into the muffin cases.  Make a depression in the top of each one with a spoon and drop a teaspoon of caramel into each one.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until firm and golden.  Remove from the tin to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 10 - 11 muffins.

DATE AND BANANA MINI MUFFINS

With my part used packet of chopped dates and a couple of tired bananas I hankered after making something quick and easy.  I have used this recipe for banana loaf before and followed the tips at the end of the recipe to add some chopped dates.  This time I made mini muffins instead.  They are a nice bite sized treat, easy to hand round to a group of people.

They were well risen, nicely spiced and not too sweet.  I think that a bananaphobe would have not been too challenged - they were very moreish and even Nick liked them!

There had been an unfortunate mishap with my brand new jar of English mixed spice the week before.  Hard tiled floors are not very forgiving, spice and broken glass went everywhere. On the advice of a friend I replaced it with a French equivalent called "quatre épices".  The spices are ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.  I looked up the ingredients of British mixed spice and they have a very similar composition although also include coriander, which I usually associate with savoury dishes. Curious! The French version worked perfectly.

The quantity of mixture in the recipe made 48 mini muffins with some still some left over, so I made a few buns as well, which took a few minutes longer to bake.  Definitely a recipe worth remembering if you're short of time but want no shortage of flavour!

The very pretty little cake stand came from a brocante shop in a nearby village.  This place is actually an old barn stuffed with antique furniture, textiles, crockery and every imaginable kind of old or vintage household goods.  Prices are not as cheap as at the average village flea market but affordable.  This little cake stand was one of several that belonged to a huge set of matching crockery, a whole dinner service with numerous serving dishes, tureens and everything else that a large household might have.  The only item of it that I wanted (although all of it was gorgeous) was one of these with the pretty bird and flowers.  I think that had there only been one in the set the shopkeeper might have refused, but there were several so she was happy to sell me one.

Ingredients

3 very ripe bananas, about 225g peeled weight

3 large eggs

100g light soft brown sugar

150ml vegetable oil (I used groundnut oil)

275g self raising flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp baking powder

a handful of chopped dates

Method

Put the dates into a small bowl and just cover with boiling water.  Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°fan / gas mk 4.  Grease the holes of two mini muffin tins.

Put the peeled bananas into a large bowl and mash roughly with a fork.  Add the eggs, sugar and oil and whisk with an electric hand held whisk until well combined.

Add the flour, spice and baking powder and whisk again until just combined.  Stir through the soaked dates including the liquid.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tins.  I used a mini ice cream scoop so that they were roughly even.  Bake for 12-15 minutes until done.  (The larger buns took 20 minutes).  Cool in the tins for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack.

Makes more than 48 mini muffins.

BANANA, RUM AND SULTANA CAKE (with walnuts)

This is one of those recipes I've had my eye on for ages and with four small bananas looking unloved in the fruit bowl the opportunity came along.  Also, I had been chatting to one of the ladies that runs an English tea room at one of the local events every October here in France and she reminded me that I made a cake or two for them last year.  I’m still not eating much more than the occasional small slice of cake myself but it occurred to me that I could make a banana cake, freeze it, and bring it out for the designated day.

The recipe is Nigella Lawson's "banana bread" from her early book "how to be a domestic goddess" which I have very rarely used.  The banana bread appealed to me because it included rum soaked sultanas!  

I stuck to the recipe apart from using golden caster sugar instead of white and did my usual trick of making a couple of muffins from a little of the mixture.  This enables me to do a "quality control" check.  In other words I can taste the cake and make sure it is good enough to sell - otherwise donating a cake I have never made before can be a bit risky.  I also covered the cake loosely with foil for the last fifteen minutes of baking as it was already looking nice and brown - cakes that look over baked do not sell well at cake stalls I have found! 

After tasting the muffin I would have to disagree with Nigella's statement that "the alcohol doesn't pervade". I thought you most definitely could taste the rum! I had used some Kraken spiced rum as that was what was lurking on the booze shelf in the pantry and it worked really well. In fact the rum flavour was so noticeable that I wondered if I had put too much in! (I hadn’t.)

So consequently I have renamed this cake from the rather uninspiring "banana bread" because I think the flavour of the rum soaked sultanas, and the walnuts, made it rather special.  It's my favourite banana cake recipe so far!

(It would also be great if made entirely into muffins, probably at least a dozen I would think.)

Ingredients

100g sultanas

75ml rum

175g plain flour

½ tsp bicarb

½ tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

125g unsalted butter, melted

150g golden caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 small very ripe bananas, or a total peeled weight of 300g, mashed

60g walnuts, roughly chopped

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

First, put the rum and sultanas into a small saucepan, bring to the boil, turn off the heat and set aside.  Leave them for the sultanas to absorb the rum and plump up for at least an hour.

When ready to make the cake, put a paper liner into a 900g (2lb) loaf tin, or grease the tin well, and preheat the oven to 170°C / 150° fan / gas mk 3.

Put the flour, bicarb, salt and and baking powder into a medium bowl and mix together well.

In a separate large bowl, beat together the melted butter and the sugar.  I used a hand held electric food mixer but a wooden spoon would work fine.

Beat in the eggs one at a time then the mashed bananas.

Drain the soaked sultanas and add to the mixture with the walnuts and vanilla.  Stir well to combine.

Add one third of the flour mixture into the bowl and stir well to combine, then the rest, one third at a time.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 50-60 minutes.  Cover loosely with foil for the last 15 minutes if the cake is already looking nice and brown.

*I used a couple of spoonfuls of the mixture to make separate muffins, taking them out of the oven when cooked, after 25 minutes.

Cool in the tin.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

PRUNE AND CHOCOLATE MINI MUFFINS

For the afternoon tea in France a few weeks ago (see here) I made some mini muffins to a recipe by Delia Smith.  I spotted the recipe in one of her older cook books, simply called "Baking", when I was actually looking for something else - the lemon curd layer cake that's on the cover (and in the next post).

I wanted some little bite sized cakes to adorn the top layer of the cake stand and these sounded perfect for the job.  I haven't found the recipe anywhere on the internet but it does seem that chocolate, prune and Armagnac (or other alcohol) is a combo that Delia is quite fond of as she has other recipes such as for a cake, mini cakes and a chocolate log.  I can't fault it - they are a match made in heaven...well probably not quite that saintly, owing to the booze!

For the icing I used Lynn Hill's recipe for a chocolate glaze which you can see here although I only made a half quantity.  In the above picture it looks a bit dull because the cakes had been in the fridge for a while, but on the day of making it looked fabulous - dark and glossy.  I decorated my muffins with halved glacé cherries, chocolate raisins and chocolate vermicelli, but you can obviously use your imagination here.  

They were very rich, boozy and chocolatey!  The prunes gave a slightly fruity hint but I doubt anyone would have identified it as prune if they didn't already know.  (Prunes do have a bad press, owing to their 1950's health food connotations !)  Each one was a perfect little morsel.

I froze the leftover muffins to enjoy later and they were just as good.

Ingredients

For the muffins

50g Agen prunes, stoned

55ml Armagnac

150g plain flour

2 tblsp cocoa powder

1 dessertspoon baking powder  (a dessert spoon is about ⅔ of a tablespoon)

¼ tsp salt

1 large egg, beaten

40g golden caster sugar

120 ml milk

50g butter, melted and slightly cooled

50g plain chocolate drops

For the topping

100g dark chocolate, chopped

45g unsalted butter

glacé cherries, halved, chocolate raisins and chocolate vermicelli to decorate.

Method

Chop the prunes into small chunks and soak in the Armagnac overnight or for as long as you can.

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Put 24 mini muffin cases into a mini muffin tin.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a large bowl.

In another large bowl, mix together the beaten egg, sugar, milk and melted butter.

Sift the dry ingredients (again) into the wet mixture and fold them in quickly.  Then add the chocolate drops, prunes and Armagnace and mix briefly again.

Divide the mixture evenly between the muffin cases (about one heaped teaspoonful in each) and bake for 10 minutes.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing from the tin to cool completely on a wire rack.

To make the topping, melt the butter and chocolate together in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Stir frequently until smooth and allow to cool slightly before using.  Spread about a teaspoonful on the top of each muffin and decorate as you like.

Makes 24 mini muffins.

AFTERNOON TEA

With all the Queen's Jubilee celebrations for being on the throne for 70 years there has been much talk of street parties and afternoon teas.  In fact in our part of France friends held their own afternoon tea party to celebrate but unfortunately I was unable to attend.  I'm back home in the UK because my father is in hospital and his future care is again under debate.  

So instead I decided it was time I posted about the afternoon tea I held for a friend's birthday just a couple of months ago.  That was in France too.

I used my three tier glass cake stand which I acquired at a brocante a couple of years ago for just 2€.  It matches some dessert plates and a regular one tier cake stand that were also collected for next to nothing from brocantes over the years.  My best white tablecloth doesn't come out very often but with that and real cups and saucers the table looked the business, even if I say so myself! 

The bottom layer was a selection of sandwiches with the crusts cut off (of course!).  There were home made egg mayonnaise and rocket on brown bread, smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber on brown and smoked ham with tomato and cucumber on white.

You can see the recipe for egg mayonnaise here.  I have never seen cress for sale in France so opted for rocket instead.  It was a good substitute.

Being in France, the sliced bread available is not quite like in the UK.  Generally the texture is nice but it always seems to me to be slightly sweet.  We toyed with the idea of making our own bread but as it was only a few days after we had arrived and we were still dealing with all the usual problems of being away from the house for so long decided it was a step too far.

The middle layer was Victoria scones.  For such an important occasion I didn't trust myself to make ordinary scones, my success with those being variable.  The Victoria scones are easy to make from the Be-Ro book recipe and for me they work every time.  They looked cute on the stand although someone who saw the pictures on Facebook said they looked like fat rascals!  

I can't say I've ever eaten a fat rascal so wouldn't know but they sound like fun so will add them to my ever lengthening bucket list of thing to bake!  You can see the recipe for Victoria scones here or look it up in the Be-Ro book - it's in all the recent editions.

The top layer, the crowning glory, was of small cakes.  The raspberry sponges were cut from a traybake recipe for a jam and coconut sponge, otherwise known as "school cake" and which I have been hankering after making for some time!  I used a recipe on the Asda website which you can see here.  It is very quick and easy and the little squares looked very pretty when topped with fresh raspberries.  You can also see the recipe here.

The little chocolate cakes were to a recipe from one of the collection of slim volumes that Delia Smith put out many years ago called "Baking".  They are chocolate, prune and Armagnac mini muffins and I topped them with an excellent chocolate icing from Lynn Hill's website Traditional Home Baking.  You can see the icing recipe here and I added a few decorations including halved glacé cherries, halved chocolate covered raisins and choclate vermicelli.  They were delicious!

No afternoon tea would be complete without an actual slice of cake so for that I made a lemon layer cake filled with lemon curd to another Delia recipe from the same book.  You can see that here.  I didn't make my own lemon curd but used a Bon Maman jar which I brought over from the UK.  Bizarrely you can buy lemon curd in France but not the Bon Maman one!

I had never made this cake before but had eaten it several times as it's a family favourite of Nick's sisters.  It was easy to make and, of course, yummy!

Our birthday guests enjoyed the afternoon tea and so did we.  Being Americans they had only ever had afternoon tea a couple of times before when in London.  It was fun to make and fun to eat.  It does involve a lot of preparation and baking with all the different elements but it's well worth the effort.

You can see my lemon curd layer cake here.

The prune and chocolate mini muffins are here.

The little raspberry cakes are here.

The egg mayonnaise recipe is here.

SAVOURY MINI MUFFINS

Whenever I find myself eating a scrumptious mini muffin at a friend’s house I make a mental note to make them more often myself.  The trouble is, I feel I need the right occasion.  With friends coming round for the afternoon I felt that both cake and savoury nibbles were called for and a batch of mini muffins seemed just the right thing.

I used my pear and goat’s cheese recipe that you can see here and adapted it for what I had in the fridge.  On this occasion I therefore made mushroom, bacon and onion mini muffins and they went down a treat.

As I was filling the holes in the mini muffin tin I realised I had been more generous with the mixture than usual and it would probably not stretch to a second 24 hole tin.  Then I remembered my 12 hole tin which was a charity shop find from last year.  It was apparently brand new as it had no sign of wear and tear or previous use (so many things in charity shops seem to be on the shelf sporting a few bits of the previous owner’s last meal – yuk) and for 50p it was a real bargain.  I knew it would come in handy eventually.

This basic recipe is very useful and can be adapted for lots of different fillings.  It makes a light and fluffy little muffin, just right for a one or two-bite mouthful and very moreish.

They are best eaten on the day they are made but will freeze well if you simply put them in a bag.  Defrost thoroughly and warm gently for a few minutes in a low oven (140 C) before serving.

Ingredients

280g plain flour

1 tblsp baking powder

a large pinch of salt

black pepper

2 medium eggs

250 ml milk

6 tblsp sunflower oil

a 100g pack of smoked lardons

4-5 medium sized mushrooms

1 small onion

a handful of grated Emmental cheese (optional)

Method

Chop the onion and mushrooms and add with the lardons to a frying pan.  Cook until the lardons are cooked.  You may or may not want to add a little oil, depending on how fatty the lardons are.  Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/ 180°fan/ gas mk 6.  Grease two 24-hole mini muffin tins.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.  Stir in the cooked lardons etc.  Season with salt and pepper and mix together.

Lightly beat the eggs and mix with the milk and oil.  Add to the other ingredients and mix until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins.  Scatter the grated cheese over the top.

Bake for about 15 minutes until risen, golden and firm to the touch.  Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 36-48 mini muffins (depending on how well you fill the holes).

APPLE AND GINGER MUFFINS

I don’t make muffins too often, in fact not often enough.  When I made these muffins for a CCC “anything goes” event, I had quite forgotten how nice muffins can be.

The “anything goes” theme is one where members can bake anything they like, not just cake, which made a nice change and it was fun to see what people thought of to bring.  There were sausage rolls, quiche, meringues, eclairs, flapjacks and madeleines.  And of course my muffins. 

(Just in case you’re wondering, and you’re probably not, why there is a small knife with the plate of muffins, it’s because at a CCC event where everyone likes to try a small piece of everything on the table, a whole muffin is not a good idea.  Half a muffin would be more than enough if there was to be room in the tummy for all of the other delights on offer.  Those who have ever been to a CCC event will completely understand this problem!)

After a pleasant hour or so of leafing through my ever growing collection of recipe books I chose a recipe from this one by Rachel Allen.  I like her recipes, have used quite a few and have never had a failure with any of them.  The recipe is actually for pear and ginger muffins but she suggests apples as an alternative. As we had several apples going begging in the fruit bowl I decided to use them.  I wondered how they would go with ginger as opposed to the more traditional cinnamon and it turned out to be a delicious combination.

Thinking about it, one of the reasons that I don’t make muffins more often is that generally they don’t keep too well.  They can be slightly stale after one day and definitely bird food after two or three.

However, in the recipe it says to “whisk together until smooth” which kind of goes against the concept that “lumpy batter makes light muffins”.  (I can’t exactly remember where I read that phrase but think it might have been in a Nigella Lawson book.)  But, having every confidence in Rachel Allen’s recipes, whisk it I did, until nice and smooth.  The result was that the texture of the muffins was more like a cake than a muffin, with the added delight that they were still perfectly nice to eat several days later.  Curious.

In fact, with the quantity of mixture and the texture of the muffins it occurred to me that it might work as a bundt cake - the next time I have a surfeit of apples.  Anyway, apple and ginger is a winning combination.  Cinnamon makes me nervous as it takes only a smidgen too much of it to make a cake taste slightly soapy.  It’s not so easy to overdo the ginger and although a whole tablespoon seemed like a lot actually it was just right.

Ingredients

275g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tblsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

200g caster sugar

4 eggs, beaten

150ml vegetable oil

300g dessert apples, peeled and chopped into 1cm dice

1 tblsp demerara sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°fan / gas mk 4.  Put 15 muffin cases into two muffin tins.*

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl.  Add the eggs and oil and whisk together until smooth.  Fold in the chopped apples.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases, filling each one about three quarters full.  (I use an ice cream scoop which makes it easy to get them evenly filled).  Sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden and springy to the touch.  Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  You can dust with icing sugar or ice with a water icing if you like, instead of sprinkling with demerara sugar.

*Makes 12-15 muffins, depending on how much you fill the cases. 

BLUEBERRY AND WHITE CHOCOLATE MINI MUFFINS

I am quite a fan of mini muffins.  They are barely more than a single mouthful in size and consequently as a treat they are far less daunting a prospect than regular muffins.  I sometimes find that just one regular muffin is quite filling, and could never eat more than one, whereas mini muffins are so easy to eat that one is never enough – and I don’t feel at all greedy in eating a second or even a third.

I made these soon after our return to France for what was going to be quite a long stay.  I knew I would be leaving our UK kitchen for several weeks so I had a quick look around for anything that would soon need using up and that I could take with me.  Among the various bits and bobs I found a packet of white chocolate chips in the cupboard and half a pack of fresh blueberries in the fridge.

I used my old faithful recipe which I have used before and in no time at all rustled up just one tray of mini muffins.  Most muffins have to be eaten on the same day as baking but these mini versions kept well for three days in a cake tin.  Which means I had three days to eat the lot as Nick is not all that keen on muffins……!!

This month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, organised by Choclette of Tin and Thyme is “anything goes”.

The No Waste Food Challenge is a monthly event of Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary which celebrates the using up of all food rather than throwing it out.

Ingredients

150 g plain flour

50g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1 egg, beaten

50g butter, melted and cooled

100 ml milk

75 g blueberries

75 g white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat the oven to 200º C (180º fan) and butter a 24 hole mini muffin tin.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.

Add the butter, egg and milk and mix together quickly.  Add the fruit and chocolate and mix in as briefly as possible, avoiding over-mixing, as long as there are no dry bits of flour.

Divide the mixture between the muffin holes.  (I use a mini ice cream scoop to get the amounts reasonable even.)  Bake for 12 - 15 minutes until risen and golden.

Cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack.

Makes 24.

STRAWBERRY AND ORANGE FRIANDS

This is one of those recipes that I had forgotten about.  I went through a phase of making friands (or financiers, they’re really the same thing) regularly until a couple of years ago then for some reason forgot all about them.  Which is a pity because they’re dead easy to make, take hardly any time from mixing bowl to serving dish, are very versatile and perfectly delicious.

They’re a kind of frangipane style of little bun, made traditionally in the oval mould for friands or oblong moulds for financiers.  They also work perfectly well made in a muffin tin, as long as you don’t overfill the holes so that they remain fairly shallow.

I was looking at a few slightly tired strawberries in the fridge and a lonely orange in the fruit bowl and thinking about what I could do with them so as not to waste them and friands sprung to mind.  Very odd.

They’re a nice little mouthful or two – much like a modest slice of cake and less filling than a muffin – and they always go down well with visitors.  That might be because many people have never heard of them before and they’re curious to try them.  Once tasted, few people can resist the combination of almonds and fruit.

Of course, having used up the strawberries and the orange I was then left with three unused egg yolks so now I have to think of a way not to waste them!  Oh well, there’s always Lulu – she has cheesy egg most days for her breakfast!

This month’s Alphabakes Challenge, organised by Ros, of The more than occasional baker, and Caroline, of Caroline Makes, is the letter “O”.  You can see the details here.

This month’s Tea Time Treats Challenge, run by Karen of Lavender and Lovage, is “small cakes”.  You can see those details here.

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter

125g icing sugar

25g plain flour

85g ground almonds

3 medium egg whites

grated rind of one orange

4-5 strawberries, thickly sliced

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan.  Butter an 8-hole friand or financier tin, or a muffin tin.

Melt the butter in a small pan and set aside to cool.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl.  Stir in the ground almonds.

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until you have a light, floppy foam.

Make a well in the flour mixture.  Add the egg whites, orange rind and melted butter and mix gently until well combined.

Divide evenly between the holes of the prepared tin or mould.  Drop a pair of strawberry slices on top of each one.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until light golden brown and firm to the touch.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.  Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Makes 8 friands.

FUDGE AND RASPBERRY MINI MUFFINS

I made these to take with us when we visited Nick’s mum this afternoon.  She hasn’t got much of an appetite and these little mini cakes can often tempt someone to eat when they would be over faced by a normal sized muffin. I wanted to use up some buttermilk left over from another day and I adapted the recipe for basic muffins in this excellent little book by Susan Reimer.  I also used a handful of raspberries and some wrapped pieces of fudge received at Christmas.

This was actually my second attempt at using up the fudge and some raspberries.  We like to have a few raspberries on our cereals or porridge but at this time of year they hardly keep at all and within a couple of days they have often gone mouldy, so I am always thinking of ways to use them up quickly.

My first attempt was to bake a cake using my new Bundt tin.  Disaster struck when I tried to turn it out.  I couldn’t decide whether the problem was that I had tried to do it when the cake was too warm, or whether I didn’t grease the tin enough, or whether it was the fudge that was the culprit. 

Although the cake looked a mess it tasted delicious. I didn’t risk making the Bundt cake again but really wanted to do something with the fudge and raspberry combination because it was lovely.

On removing the little muffins from their tins, some of them were well stuck where the fudge had melted, gluing them very efficiently to the non-stick coating, even though I had buttered the tins thoroughly.  So that confirmed my suspicions, the fudge was the culprit.

They were delicious.  Mini muffins are little marvels.  They take no time at all to make ~ this time I used my mini chopper to chop the fudge into tiny pieces, which took a lot less time than chopping them by hand.

They also look cute and irresistible and are a perfect single mouthful.  Once you have eaten the first one it’s impossible not to eat at least one or two more!

Ingredients

280g plain flour

2tsp baking powder

½tsp bicarbonate of soda

¼tsp salt

1tsp ground cinnamon

55g raspberries, halved

55g fudge, chopped into small pieces

1 egg

100g golden caster sugar

200ml buttermilk

2 tblsp raspberry yoghurt (plain will do)

70ml milk

90ml vegetable oil

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Grease the holes of two 24-hole mini muffin tins.*

Sift all but a tablespoon of the flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon into a large bowl.  Put the tablespoon of flour into a cup or small dish, add the fudge pieces and toss to make sure they are all coated and not sticking together.

In another bowl, beat the egg then mix in the sugar, yoghurt, milk and oil.

Pour the wet mixture into the flour mixture and combine until there is no dry flour but do not over-mix.  Add the fudge pieces and raspberries and mix briefly.  The mixture should be a dropping consistency so add a little more milk if necessary.

Divide between the holes in the muffin tin ~ a mini ice cream scoop is ideal for this.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until risen and golden.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 48 mini muffins. 

*You could instead make 12 standard muffins, in which case bake for 5-10 minutes longer.

ORANGE AND BANANA YOGHURT CAKE

It’s the usual story.  A couple of very sad looking bananas in the fruit bowl and a guilty conscience about throwing them out.  Not that many years ago they would simply have gone in the bin and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.  Then I started putting them in the compost bin which made me feel very smug and virtuous.  More recently I have put them in the freezer for use later but the freezer has quite a few in it already.   So to ease my conscience I just had to bake something.

How’s that for an excuse to bake a cake ?!

I also found half a large tub of plain yoghurt in the fridge and a few oranges about to become slightly past their best at the bottom of the fruit bowl.  After a bit of research it appears that bananas and oranges do go together so I decided to go for it, using up most of my leftovers in one guilt-free bake.

Lulu gave me that “who do you think you’re kidding?” look.  She can be extremely perceptive at times and we both knew that as Nick absolutely loathes cooked bananas in any form, the only person available to eat the cake would be yours truly.  Sadly, dogs are not allowed cake in this house.

I adapted a recipe on the Channel 4 website which was actually written for children (and has since disappeared).  It was indeed very easy and produced a huge quantity of mixture, far too much for my large loaf tin.  So I made some of it into six muffins.

The muffins were fabulous.  Nice and moist with a lovely light texture.  This could be my favourite recipe for banana muffins from now on.

The cake was lovely too.  The orange and banana combination worked very well and I would definitely do that again.  I drizzled some orange icing over it to glam it up a bit but with literally only me to eat it, it was beginning to be past its best after three days.  I had taken the precaution of freezing some thick slices but by the third day I couldn’t eat any more so a small piece went in the bin after all.  Still, at least I tried so my conscience is clear.

I am submitting the cake to this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, organised by Ros of The more than occasional baker and, this month, by Caroline of Caroline Makes.  This month the letter is “O” and you can see the details here.

Ingredients

120ml sunflower oil

225g light muscovado sugar

3 large eggs

225g self-raising flour

1tsp ground cinnamon

zest and juice of one orange

2 ripe bananas, peeled and mashed

150ml low fat natural yoghurt

2tbslp golden icing sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease a 900g (2lb) loaf tin or use a greaseproof paper liner.

Put the eggs, oil and sugar into a large bowl and whisk together.

Sift in the flour and cinnamon and stir in gently, do not over mix.

Add the mashed bananas, yoghurt and orange zest and stir.

Spoon the mixture into your loaf tin to about two thirds full.  (Make muffins from any remaining mixture.)

Bake for about an hour, until risen and golden.  (Muffins will be done in 15-20 minutes.)

When cold, make some icing with the sifted icing sugar blended with enough orange juice to achieve the right runniness and drizzle over the cake.

Makes 6 muffins and one cake that will cut into 8-10 slices.