Posts tagged - baking

Banana and raisin pudding muffins

Black bananas. Yuck.

Neither Mushroom nor I will touch a banana if it’s got more than the tiniest hint of brown on it’s skin. Mr B prefers them sweeter but we don’t like the texture as they turn, so we tend to use them a lot in baking. Sometimes we simply mash them with blueberries and zap them for 20 seconds in the microwave for a healthy, tasty dessert but when we have the time we like to make banana bread, or, in this case – pudding muffins. I call them pudding muffins because although we used a bread recipe, the consistency of the end result was more like pudding (and tasted delicious served hot with custard). Here’s how we did it:

Ingredients: 3 ripe bananas, mashed, a cup of raisins (about 200g), a cup of flour (about 2oog), 1 egg, beaten, either 200g sugar OR 100g sugar and about 50g honey or agave syrup , a drop of vanilla essence and a teaspoon of baking soda. We add a splash of milk (for the pudding consistency) and touch of cinnamon too.

Method: Start with the bananas, then add the egg, sugar (and agave syrup if using) and vanilla and mix well with a wooden spoon. Then add all the dry ingredients and stir well. You can use a mixer for this but we prefer not too as we like the lumpy banana bits you get when you mix by hand! We put the mixture into silicone cake cases but you can just use a muffin tray if you have one. Pop in a pre-heated oven (350 degrees/Gas mark 4) for one hour. Et voila!

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We ran out of silicone cases so we put the rest of the mixture into a square cake tin and cut the end result into slices – bigger portions for bigger appetites! They kept in the fridge for about a week.

 

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Monster making and birthday baking

The end of this week has seen the return of the rain so we’ve been doing a bit more indoor activity. As we’ve been out and about a lot lately, it’s actually made a pleasant change for us!

This morning we made an egg box monster, inspired by CBeebies Mister Maker. We actually didn’t have anything needed for the things he made on the show but Mushroom said “let’s make a Mister Maker thing! Let’s paint!” So I went through the recycling and we improvised.

We painted the outside of the box purple.

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Mushroom wanted to mix colours together so this was also a good teaching opportunity. He knew we needed red but couldn’t remember if it was blue or green we added to make purple and needed reminding.

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Then  I suggested we painted the inside red for the mouth. Mushroom told me ‘no, it’s pink,’ and showed me his tongue. Of course, he was right so we did some more mixing – this time red, white and a sort of clear sparkly pink, which made a lovely coral colour

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Once dry, we added eyes, teeth and voila! An egg box monster!

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Birthday baking

Also in this week’s indoor activity, we volunteered to make Grandma’s birthday cake!

It’s a simple sponge recipe, with added choc chips and peppermint essence. It was supposed to be green but we didn’t use enough food colouring so we covered it with chocolate buttercream icing and topped it with sprinkles.

Grandma cake

We did also manage to get out and about a little, with Mushroom riding his bike to the shop to buy the ingredients!

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Those googles again… He’s very attached! This weekend we did actually go swimming so they were used as intended for once!

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Soft oaty slices (or sugarfree flapjacks!)

I thought it was about time I shared a recipe! Mushroom and I do a  lot of cooking activity together but my aversion to measuring out ingredients means that things don’t always go to plan and when they do, I’m never quite sure how to share the recipe.

This week, Mushroom and I had a go at making soft oaty bars a la Goodies. I looked at the ingredients and figured they’re basically sugar free flapjacks so I searched for a few recipes online to see what else was out there… Then we made up our own. Here’s how we did it (all ingredients are approximate!):

You will need: 160g porridge oats, 100g raisin, 2 apples (cored and grated), 1tsp cinnamon, tsp ginger (or used mixed spice), 2 tbsp butter or margarine (we used Clover), 2tbsp honey (one for drizzling!) and one fruit shoot (apple and pear flavour, or 1 cup regular apple or pear juice)

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Method: Add the grated apple, raisins and cinnamon to a bowl.

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 Pour in the melted butter…

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…then add the porridge oats, stirring as you go.

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Add a tablespoon of honey…

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And finally, the fruit shoot!

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Stir until you have a thick porridgey consistency, then transfer to a baking tray (we used a cake tin this time). Drizzle honey on the top and then put it in the oven at gas mark 4 for 30 minutes.

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Leave it to cool, remove from the tin/tray and then cut into slices…

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Et Voila!

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Next time we might try banana and chopped dates (we can probably leave out the honey for this) or even strawberry and chocolate chips (although of course then they won’t be sugar free…). If you try these, do let us know what you think by adding a comment below!

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