wholemeal banana cake

I run a community recipe site called Nibblous, and if you Google for banana cake, you’ll find my friend Jaqui’s recipe is the number one hit, which I’m quite pleased about! I’ve long used a similar recipe to that myself for banana cake, but I’ve refined it quite a bit over the years, and I change it around almost every time I make it.

I’m a fairly recentlly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic, and I try to avoid white flour, so I thought I’d have a bash at a wholemeal banana cake.

6oz wholemeal flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
4 ripe bananas – the riper, the better
4oz butter or margarine
4.5oz granulated sugar
a good grate of nutmeg
2 eggs
a generous teaspoon of vanilla essence

Now, I’m lazy – I do this in a food processor. I start with the bananas and whizz them up till they’re all mashed, then I bung in everything else, whizz some more, and it’s done. If you don’t have a food processor, or want to do it the long way round, see Jacqi’s recipe above for mashing and creaming and folding :)

Decant into a well greased 2lb loaf tin (I always cheat and use those pan liners which I get from Lakeland – less trouble) and bake for 40 minutes at gas 4, then 30 minutes at gas 2. Leave to cool in the tin, or if you’ve used a liner, then it comes straight out with no hassle and you can cut a test slice pretty quickly :)

I always double it up and make two cakes, as they freeze remarkably well.

I was really pleased with this wholemeal version – it’s slightly nutty, and the nutmeg was a new addition this evening, and it worked really well.

You can bung anything in this – chocolate pieces, mixed spice, currants, chopped apple, walnuts; it’s a really great basic cake recipe.

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weekend cooking

We were due at a Transition Town film meeting on Saturday afternoon, with tea and cake afterwards, so I baked muffins in the morning: I had some brown bananas, and a couple of rather tired clementines, so did a dozen each of clementine and poppyseed, and banana and bran flake. We were greedy, and kept 4 of each back for ourselves, and in the end, not many people turned up for the film, so I brought several muffins back home with me, which are safely stowed in the freezer for when I have a “must have CAKE!” moment.

It’s worth mentioning that the banana muffin mix freezes really well, and I’ve no reason to suppose that the clementine won’t do the same; certainly takes a lot less space than baked muffins, and they’re so much nicer freshly made.

Vegetable Tagine
Sunday, I took an aubergine, a courgette, a red and a yellow pepper, chopped them up and put them in the slow cooker. Chopped up a sweet potato, a butternut squash and a huge carrot, and parboiled them for about 7 minutes. Drained them, added to slow cooker. Chopped an onion and some garlic, fried them off in some olive oil, then added some home made Ras El Hanout and stirred it round for a couple of moments, then added a tin of tomatoes and some water, brought to the boil, added to slow cooker with some salt and pepper. Stirred, regarded, added a tin of chick peas (should have been organised to soak some overnight, but ho hum). Voila, vegetable tagine – after about 6 hours in the cooker. Made 8 portions.

Also knocked out a couple of gallons of fruit juice wine – one prune, one red grape. I’ve not tried this before, but Tesco were doing 3 for 2 on fruit juice last week, and so for about a fiver including sugar it had to be tried. That makes [counts] ten gallons on the go, and about 20 bottles in the rack, so we should be able to continue our alcoholic lifestyle for a while yet.

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Irish potato scones

This is a classic Irish recipe – we used to eat them a lot, but sort of forgot about them; I made some for breakfast this morning, and thought I’d share.  It’s an ideal way to use up leftover boiled potato, too!

In a food processor, blitz 6oz cold cooked potato, 4oz flour (I always use plain, but self raising would do), and 2oz of butter or marg.  Once you have a dough, remove it from the processor and knead a little on a floured work surface.

Now, you can be diligent, roll it out with a rolling pin, and cut the dough into rounds – or you can do what I do, which is to divide the dough into 8, and pat it into rough roundish shapes.

Also, the recipe recommends frying in a little butter on a griddle, but I’m afraid I stick them on a greased baking tray at gas 6 for 15 minutes.  And I don’t peel the spuds either :)

These are just utterly delicious straight out of the oven, spread with butter, and also work really well as part of a great British fry up.

If you don’t have a food process, mash the potatoes as is (no milk or butter), rub the fat into the flour and add the spud, then continue with the rolling (or not).

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baking and winemaking weekend

Sorted out some wine – filtered and bottled one gallon of parsnip, although the other one went cloudy again, racked the three gallons of rhubarb (which was really 2.5 gallons and racked down to 2 + a bottle), racked the two gallons of apricot and stopped the fermentation, made a gallon of Earl Grey just to see what it’s like.

Had a baking session on Sunday – made Norwegian cinnamon buns for tea – I followed Nigella’s recipe slavishly, but the dough was ridiculously sticky, and a quick Google finds I am not alone.  I’ve amended the recipe on Nibblous to reflect, but they really were rather delicious.  We had no powdered cinnamon, and had no desire to go out, so just whizzed up some cinnamon quills in the little blender, and that was fine.  Also made some bread dough for lunch today/tomorrow, which has just come out of the oven.

We had reactive sausage rolls for tea too – frozen puff pastry (because life really *is* too short to make your own; I did it once, just to prove it), and the stuffing left over from the Christmas goose, which had been shoved in the freezer.  It was sausagemeat, breadcrumbs, lemon sage, cranberries, shopped shallot, garlic, if I recall correctly.  Pete manfully did the rolling out, and they were fab.  We ate them all. Oink.  There was some filling left, so I shall fry it up for lunch, accompanied by egg, and freshly baked bread.

For Saturday supper we had spring greens in coconut milk – I recommend this to you, it’s utterly delicious, dead cheap and very quick.  Try it! It works with kale, or curly cabbage (but not white, I wouldn’t think), or purple sprouting broccoli.

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reactive winemaking!

I’m getting the hang of this winemaking lark now, and I’m much more confident than I used to be.  We did our monthly trip to Makro on Saturday (first time the car had been out for a fortnight!), and they had a 5kg bag of carrots reduced to £2.30.   “Wine!”, I thought, and bore the bag home in triumph, along with 96 cans of cat fud and other essentials.

5kgs is a *lot* of carrots, I may tell you, but Pete and I topped and tailed them and chopped them up, and then I boiled them up in my preserving pan (bought from eBay a couple of years ago, and so useful).  We had to do it them in two batches.  You want the liquor for wine, and the carrots can be repurposed for eating.

I had a little ham hock in the freezer, and I put it in the slow cooker yesterday before I went out.  So, in a serendipitous style, I had a load of nice ham stock for soup.  One half of the Jordan carrot mountain went through the Magimix and into a big pan with the stock, and that’ll be this week’s soup, or the start thereof.  And I have some coriander to go with it, which will be nice.

The other batch of carrot will be liquidised and, somehow, shoehorned into th freezer for another soup.  I really can’t get used to living with just one freezer, and it’s always full to bursting, with me wanting to cook still more.

I have a big batch of Gujuerati beef curry in the slow cooker right now, and space will have to be found for that too … I’ll write the recipe up tomorrow.

And there are cheese scones and some cocktail sossidges in the oven for supper …

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bread in 5 minutes a day

Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day

I read about this book on a friend’s Facebook at the weekend, and a trundle round Google brought forth a recipe, which is here.

It seemed too good to be true, and as I was in possession of bread flour and yeast, and a set of American cup measures, I thought I’d give it a go this morning.

I mixed the dough in the food mixer, using a dough hook, and set it to rise in a small fermenting bucket that I usually use for winemaking.  It took about ten minutes to do that phase, and when I went back to look at it in a couple of hours, it had risen beautifully.

I followed the rest of the instructions, except for the bit about pizza paddles and stones – I just bunged it on a baking tray dusted with flour, but it did stick a bit, so I’ll line it with parchment or some such next time.

But bugger me – it worked.  It made a lovely loaf, although it was a little too salty for our tastes.  Still, that can be adjusted, and I’m about to buy the book. The idea of having dough available all the time (it can be frozen too) is just too good to pass up!

Recommended.

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christmas cake

Rather belatedly, I made our christmas cake last night; I’d normally have done it in November, but what with the move and all …

I use a variation on a tried and tested Nigel Slater recipe, and here it is:

Prepare a 20cm deep cake pan – grease well, line with a double thickness of greaseproof paper, with the sides lined to above the top by a couple of inches.

Amass 1kg of dried fruit – I used figs, prunes, apricots, dates, raisins and sultanas, as that was what was in the baking box, and cut it into small pieces.  This is tedious, but I didn’t bother so much last year, and it wasn’t as nice.

Cream 250g butter and 250g brown sugar together – I used about half and half dark muscovado and demerara.  Beat until it’s light and fluffy, or as light and fluffy as it can be with muscovado in it ..

Add three eggs one by one – don’t worry, it will curdle, probably.

Add 65g of ground almonds, and 100g of shelled hazelnuts, 3 tablespoons of alcohol (recipe says brandy, but I generally use whiskey, and this year I used good bourbon!), zest and juice of an orange, half a teaspoon of baking powder, and 250g of plain flour.  And the fruit.

My mixer always gives up at this point and I have to fold it all together by hand.

Put it in the tin, cook for one hour at gas mark 3, then 1.5 hours at gas 2 – don’t open the oven to prod it until the end.  Leave to cool in the tin, then wrap tightly in foil, and feed it with more alcohol every few days.

We eat as is, as we don’t much like icing.  Merry Christmas!

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gooseberry sponge pudding

A friend of mine regularly sells produce from her garden to support the LibDems, and this week she was offering gooseberries.  I bought 10lbs (for a fiver!) – 6lbs have gone to make wine, 2 bags full in the freezer, and the rest I put into a pudding last night.

The goosegogs went into a bowl, and I put in a good sloosh of elderflower cordial (gooseberries and elderflower are a match made in heaven) and a little honey. I didn’t even bother to top and tail them!

I beat 5oz of marg and 5oz of sugar until it was light and creamy, then added 2 eggs and 5 oz of ground almonds bit by bit (egg, then half the almonds then egg then rest of the almonds) and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla essence.

Lobbed the mix on top of the fruit and scattered with quite a lot of slivered almonds, as I’d opened a new bag last week, and some of them didn’t fit into their airtight jar and I wanted to use them up.

Baked at 180˚ for 50 minutes.  Gorgeous.

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banana muffins – late breakfast

banana muffins – late breakfast, originally uploaded by ramtops.

Ridiculously easy – I made just half a dozen for breakfast, to use up some ancient bananas.

50g softened butter
90g demerara sugar
1 medium egg
3 small, tired, bananas, peeled
75g natural yoghurt
120g plain flour
1 tsps baking powder
25g wheat flakes
2 tbsp milk

Hurl everything except the wheat flakes in the food processor and blitz. Add the wheat flakes and pulse so they’re broken up, but not powdered.

Put in a 6 cup muffin pan (I always use a silicon one), bake for 25 minutes at 190˚ C. Leave to cool in the pan until hunger overcomes you.

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muesli flapjacks

I wanted to make a cereal bar – something that Pete could take with him cycling, and I could eat after swimming, for an energy hit.  They’re so ridiculous expensive to buy, and we have muesli sitting in the cupboard uneaten.

I googled a bit, and came up with this:

I soaked the contents of a 250g bag of dried tropical fruit in about 5 tablespoons of apple juice for about half an hour.  Then I whizzed them up in the food processor.

Put 330g of muesli in a bowl, and melted 225g of marg in the microwave.  Added marg and fruit to the muesli and stirred it well.

Put it in a 7″ square silicon cake pan, and baked at gas 5 for about 40 minutes.  Cooled in the pan, scoring it into bars when it was warm.

They are very nice but not quite the right texture – they need to be a bit stickier, but I don’t want to add syrup, so I shall have a mull.

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