muffin madness!

well here it is - 2013 (still keep typing 12...) and i'm feeling productive and inspired so here is another post! my new year's resolution is to make sure i post on this blog at least once a week - degree be damned! happy new year!

the second birthday in our house last term was the lovely emma who has a penchant for muffins. therefore her birthday bake was simple in conception if not necessarily in execution!

her birthday came in the middle of exeter's monsoon season and so i had to brave the noah-inspired floods to stock up on ingredients for the multitude of muffins that i had planned. it was also a time where i was really busy which meant that the baking did not occur until the night before her birthday when i returned from a history cocktail social somewhat inebriated...! with april as my sous chef we set about establishing a muffin production line that carried on into the small hours of the morning. the things you do for love! (actually it was quite fun!)

so perhaps we were lucky that the muffins came out as well as they did - but they went down a treat and made a beautiful centre piece for emma's birthday tea. and gave me a chance to crack a few of my (possibly too) large collection of cake stands which i carted down to uni with me!

i already knew emma had certain favourite flavours so i set about finding recipes for these - the first was white chocolate and raspberry (one of my favourites too!). finding raspberries in the middle of november is not the easiest task so i made do with raspberry coulis but i think the result was passable. i also made an error in picking up a bar of white chocolate 'crunch' (which was basically a thin white chocolate kitkat) but i'd like to think this added texture!

april doing a pro job of mixing

we saved some of the coulis and chocolate to sprinkle on top before baking

our bradley wiggins muffin - complete with sideburns!



another variety i chose was the classic blueberry as these are nice and moist and can be a bit lighter than other muffin varieties.

sticking with an unintentional fruit theme another type was banana and chocolate chip (again there were overripe bananas in the kitchen) - what began as using up ingredients actually turned into my favourite type!

lastly we also made lemon drizzle muffins which were not all that successful as the drizzle leaked all the way through the muffins and their cases! but were still scrummy.

part of the beauty of muffins is their simplicity to make - you don't need an electric whisk, just a wooden spoon as they only want a minimal amount of mixing. they are also lower in sugar than cakes so are slightly better for you - especially with the fruity additions! however this does mean they don't keep as long - but when you make things this yummy they don't tend to hang around for long!

love,

nen

x

bonkers bananas.

(firstly - does anyone else still use the gwen stefani song to check that they have spelt banana properly?!?!)

but anyway - i hope everyone has had a very merry christmas and been spoilt rotten, particularly on the food front. i hope there's been a lot of baked goods to go around! this christmas i made chocolate orange cupcakes and white chocolate and cranberry cookies but more on that in another post.

for now it's all about the banana cake. this is probably one of THE easiest cakes to make ever - you don't even need an electric whisk. this is great when you have overripe bananas (aka the ones that are going black and shmushy!) as we often do in our student house (hello parents buying us fruit and it not getting eaten... whoopsie!) but this is an excellent way to put them to good use (and to kid yourself that you're getting one of your five a day).

the first time we (my housemate april was in on the act) was a classic late night uni baking session (which also demonstrates that you don't have to be particularly awake to make it!) we followed this recipe (although not sure it really deserves to be called a recipe as it's so simple!)

april's mad mixing skills

once you've poured it into the tin, top with a covering of brown sugar for a nice crunchy top

the finished result - scrummy!

this is best served warm: note warm not hot (much to my housemates' dismay) let it cool in the tin for a bit.

the second time we made this emma and april had the genius idea of adding chopped up rolo! which makes it more naughty but even more delicious!

so if you've got any bananas lying around and you fancy baking something simple this is the one for you!

love,

nen

x