Banana "bruffins"

We were recently left with a lot of ripe bananas and I couldn't quite face another banana in my morning cereal so A decided to make a banana loaf from Mary Berry's "Baking Bible".  Unfortunately we realised we didn't have any bread tins in the house so these "bruffins" (bread muffins) were born.

You'll need:

100 g softened butter
175 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 ripe bananas
225 self-raising flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons milk

(Makes 12 muffins)

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Line a 12 x muffin tray with muffin paper cups.

2.  Place all the measured ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat for about 2 minutes until the mixture is just evenly combined.  Be careful not to overbeat the muffin mixture otherwise they will taste a little tough.  Divide the mixture up into the 12 muffin cups evenly.

3.  Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 mins until the tops of the muffins are just golden and they are well risen.  A fine skewer inserted should come out clean.  Leave to cool in the muffin trays.

You can serve these with vanilla ice-cream as a dessert or have a couple for breakfast with a tall glass of milk. 

Enjoy! :)

Macadamia nut & white chocolate brownies - recipe

 

This recipe is from Ottolenghi's first cookbook "The Cookbook".  So far I'm really loving the cookbook as the recipes are really spot on.  Apparently the key with baking brownies is not to overbake them.  This means you have to take it out earlier than you think it will be done to avoid it turning into into a cake. 


Ingredients:

• 300g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
• 200g unsalted butter, plus some extra for greasing the pan
• 280g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 free-range eggs
• 230g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 200g macadamia nuts, toasted for 5 mins
• 200g white chocolate chips (or chocolate broken into pieces)

Steps:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees celcius. 
2. Brush a 20 cm tin square pan or similar sized round pan with melted butter and line with baking paper.
3. Melt the dark chocolate with the butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water until fully melted.  The bowl should not touch the water, and take the chocolate butter mixture off the heat once it has melted.  If it get too hot, then the brownies can get a bit greasy when it is baked. 
4. Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence in a large bowl until just combined.
5. Add the melted chocolate butter mixture and mix lightly.
6. Fold in the sifted flour.
7. Add the macadamia nuts and chocolate chips.
8. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out with gooey crumbs (not completely dry).  The top of the brownies should be completely dry.

These were my first batch of brownies and when they came out, they were a bit on the greasy side.  But I let them rest overnight and they firmed up very nicely to a rather dense fudgy texture on the next day.  They were so rich I had to cut them into small squares as I was worried people would OD on chocolate. 

For my next batch I'm thinking of adding raspberries, and maybe almonds or hazelnuts.

What's your favourite flavour of brownies?  Let me know!

Macadamia nut & white chocolate brownies

I'm not sure whether I've never made brownies before yesterday.  After reading a couple of my baking books I discovered that the recipe wasn't as complex as other seemingly simple cakes, like sponges!  Recipe to follow soon.  I promise.  

(Source of recipe: Ottolenghi - The Cookbook)

Stack of brownies, which disappeared pretty quickly. Into my tummy.

Bakerella Cake Pops

I had no idea what cake pops were when they popped out on my screen this morning, turns out they are gorgeous lollipops that you can stick onto top of your cake.

Bakerella makes these fantastic lil cake pops out with cake, melted candy and fun candy bits like sugar pearls for the sheep below.  Super creative and very cute!

Bahhhhh!

Made with mini and regular sized oreos, how cool is that?