One Bowl Banana Bread

Up until a few years ago, I'd have said 'Thanks, but no' if offered a piece of banana bread - mostly because of the thought of how it should taste, rather than the actual taste. Bread? Banana? Together? No, doesn't sound like it should work.

 But I started trying different recipes when offered, and found myself actually liking it. And then of course had to start trying to make it. The recipe below is slightly adapted from one my sister gave me, no idea where she found it though. It's sweet and kinda gooey, and not overly banana flavoured. And, it's really good with chocolate spread! And since the bananas smush better when they're a few days old, it's great to use up those bananas that have gone too brown for the picky people in the house to eat!

The best bit about this recipe though? All I use when making it is a bowl, a fork, and a couple of spoons. We like these kinda recipes!

One Bowl Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 bananas
• 2 tbsp golden syrup
• 3/4 cup caster/superfine sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup self raising flour
• pinch salt

How To:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

Grease and line your loaf tin. (Or grease and flour if you don't have liners.)
Mash the bananas in a large bowl. The older, browner and squishier the bananas the better. Once mashed, add in the golden syrup and mix well. Add the sugar and stir in, making sure it's completely incorporated. Add the egg and mix in well. Once these are all mixed together, sift in the flour and salt. Gently mix the flour into the wet mix.

Pour into your prepared tin and bake for 30 mins. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Options: I sometimes add a bit of grated chocolate into the mix. It's a nice extra flavour. And, if your kids are watching, they're more likely to eat the bread if they know there's chocolate in there too!

Suggestions: Can be eaten warm or cold. Can even be toasted - albeit carefully. And like I said, really good with a bit of chocolate spread. A slice of this would make a lovely addition to any lunch box.

Oatey Oats

I found a recipe on Bakerella's website (love her!) recently that appealed to me. It had pink M&M's in it, how could I not like it? However, my problem was the oats. I'm not a fan of oats, or porridge, or anything that has oats in it to be honest. They make things grainey and too chewy. But the allure of pink m&m's and chocolate chips made me want to try these anyway. And having made them, it may be the start of my conversion to the Oat side!

Now I live in Ireland, so it's difficult to get individual coloured M&M's, so I just used regular M&M's. But you'll see that below. As you can also see, I cooked them a little too long, and they got a little dark. But it's the brown sugar, it makes the dough darker so unlike a normal cookie mix, you can't say cook until golden brown. Wasn't sure they were done, so left them another 2 minutes. That was my mistake. A little too dark on the bottom. BUT, they still tasted gorgeous! So I may become a convert to oats yet. Any suggestions for other oatey recipes that aren't overkilled with oats?

The recipe I used is in cups, but I'm going to convert it and I will update it on here once I've figured it out properly. I also really like this recipe because it's so easy!!

Cowboy Cookies

Ingredients

Finished product.

• 1 1/3 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup oats (I used plain porridge oats and they worked fine)
• 3/4 cup M&M's
• 3/4 cup choc-chips (I used Milk, but dark or white would probably work well too)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup caster sugar.
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 tsp vanilla.

How to:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line or grease your baking tray.

Uncooked dough. Odd looking.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the three wet ingredients and beat until combined. Sadly, yes you may need to use your hands to get it to stick together properly. It feels weird, almost like a hand scrub (guess that's the oats!), and it looks weird, but it's worth it.

Break off chunks of dough, roll them into balls and put on baking tray. Flatten slightly with your hand (or the bottom of a floured glass, anything that will squish them a bit), and bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes. Don't do like I did and give them that extra two minutes just in case. Unless of course there's dough still visible.

Before.

Options:  Good both warm and cold. They get harder and chewier when cold. But that may be because they were slightly overdone. And, weirdly, for a self confessed chocaholic, there was a bit too much chocolate in these for me. So I might reduce the chocolate to half cups, instead of 3/4's.

Suggestion: Take two, dollop some of your favourite ice-cream inbetween them and Ta-Dah!! Home made ice cream sandwich!


As with all recipes, it's trial and error. I like to stick to the recipe I'm using the first time I try it, so I can then alter it once tasted to suit me own tastes.

Lemony Loaves

Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting in a class, and all I could think of was lemons. Don't ask me why, but lemon flavoured food was on my mind, not how to protect myself against libel. I had bought a new mini-loaf tin the day before, and I think the combination of the two was too much to handle.

So, once the class was over I sat down with my newest best friend, foodgawker, and searched for lemon based recipes. I found hundreds, too many to trawl through. But, as I had a new toy to try out, I focused on loaves. Then I found this, a recipe for Blackberry & Lemon Cake, from another Irish foodblogger.  It sounded perfect.

I am not the best at inventing my own recipes, but I will tease and tamper with everyone elses. So, with no blackberries around, but an abundance of blueberries, I teased this recipe to fit my ingredients. You could easily use this recipe for cupcakes, or even to make a full loaf. But since I had the new tin, I was going to make mini ones, no matter what!


Lemon & Blueberry Loaves

Ingredients

• 150s unsalted butter
• 150g caster (fine) sugar
• 200g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 medium eggs
• 50ml milk.
• 1 lemon
• 100g blueberries

How To:

Preheat oven to 170 degrees celsius.
Grease and flour the mini loaf tin. (Slightly awkward to do, but worth it when they come out of the oven. Unfortunately, I haven't found cases for mini loaf tins just yet! Anyone know if they can be had?)

With the flour, sugar, baking powder and butter, do the same as for the crumble topping. Crumb the butter, flour and baking powder together until it looks like breadcrumbs, then add in the sugar, mixing well.

Put the eggs and milk into a mug/jug and beat with a fork until they're combined.

Make a well in the centre of the crumble type mixture, and add the egg mixture into it. Beat until you get a loose, smooth batter.

Grate the rind of one lemon into the batter, and follow it up with the juice. Beat into the mix.

Tip the washed blueberries into the batter, and using a spoon gently fold them into the mixture. Once they're combined, divide the mixture into your cases. Pop in the oven for 30 minutes, until the cakes are golden brown. Remove from oven and leave to cool in the tin. They should just pop out of the tin once cool (this is where greasing and flouring comes in handy!)   Enjoy!

Options: You could easily serve these with a dollop of cream and they'd be fab. And of course, you can alter the flavours to suit your palette. If a recipe says one lemon, I tend to use more, because I adore the tangy taste of a lemon. But I stuck with one this time out because my lemon was very strong. The entire kitchen smelt like lemon, it was wonderful!!

Summer In A Glass

I know I only just talked about how its Autumn, and how I love all things autumnal, but, that having been said, who doesn't love summer too?

I usually get my fill of smoothies during the warm summer months, but since our summer months weren't exactly warm this year, I kinda skipped the smoothie thing. And now I miss it.

Berries are everywhere right now. Either because they're in season, or just coming to the end. Strawberries ended a while ago, but they're still around. So, last week, I bulk bought whatever I could find. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. Washed them all and divided them into some freezable containers, added some kiwi and banana and chucked them in the freezer. The plan was, individual smoothie portions. And it worked!



I took a tub out today, let it defrost for a half hour or so, then plonked it into a blender with some orange juice and a couple scoops of frozen yogurt. Hit the whizz button and let it do its magic.

And a glass of pink summery goodness was born!




One Serving of Summer Smoothie

How to:

(A big handful each of the berries.)

• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Red Grapes
• 1 kiwi
• half a banana
• half cup of orange juice (fresh or carton, either works)
• 1 scoop plain frozen yogurt

Put all ingredients into a blender, mix on high for 2-3 minutes.  The frozen yogurt makes it cold, but if you want a really cold smoothie, do like I did and freeze the fruit first.

Options:   Most fruit will blend, and most will freeze. So the great thing with this is you can make it how you like. Don't like blueberries? Keep them out. Prefer white grapes to red? Swap them around. It's all about trial and error and tasting.
If you have a bit of a sweet tooth, try drizzling a spoon of honey into the mix when it's being whizzed. Though depending on the fruit, it may be sweet enough.

A Few Of My Favourite Things

It's Autumn....and will soon be Winter. My two favourite seasons. It's cold, and dreary, and most people hate it. But it gives me ample reason to enjoy a few of my favourite things.
Reading a good book in front of a fire. The smell of a fire when you come inside from the rain. But most of all, warm, wintery comfort food.


The weather this week has been an indication of whats to come. Wet and windy and cold. And that can only mean one thing in my house - Crumble.

Apple Crumble has been a firm favourite in my house for as long as I can remember. And while over the years I have tried a few different variations, I always come back to the same simple recipe. It's warm, it's comforting, it's great in Winter or Summer, or any other time of year for that matter. And it's easy! Normally, I would do an Apple & Strawberry Crumble, (or Strappleberry, if you will) but seeing as blackberries are abundant at this time of year, I decided to be different!
You might notice I haven't cooked the apples first, I never have, and I doubt I ever will. It seems like a lot of work when the crumble goes into the oven anyway, and this way leaves the apples slightly crunchy still, which I love.

Apple & Blackberry Crumble

Ingredients:

• 8oz Plain Flour
• 4oz Butter
• 2oz Light Brown Sugar
• 3 - 4 Apples, dependant on size
• 100gms Blackberries 
• tbsn fine sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (Celsius)

Crumble:
      Put flour into a bowl, add butter and rub together using your fingers. Keep rubbing the butter into the flour until it's all mixed in and it looks like fine breadcrumbs.  No matter what anyone says, no kitchen gadget will do this bit quite as well as you will with your own hands. Add the brown sugar and mix through. Set crumble mix aside.

     Get an ovenproof dish, peel and core your apples and slice thinly into dish. Wash blackberries thoroughly and add to apples. Sprinkle a tablespoon of fine sugar over the fruit. Use more than one if your apples or berries are very tart (You'll know because by now you've probably tasted them at least once or twice.)

     Sprinkle crumble mix over fruit. Cook for 30 mins, until crumble topping is browned.  Serve warm with ice-cream. (Or cream. Or custard. Or just by itself. It's all good.)

I had a bit of everything. Blackberry on left, strawberry at top, vanilla ice cream to the right! :)

Options:  As I mentioned above, I usually use strawberries. You can use any kind of fruit you want. These are just my favourites. I have tried pear in the past, wasn't too fond of it. I tend to stick to apple and add a berry. Raspberry works really well.

    Also, if you want your crumble to have a bit more of a kick, add some crushed almonds. Or some cinnamon. Or some oats. This is just a very basic, tried and tested crumble mix.