Recipe: Sticky banana & salted caramel muffins

Good evening! 
As if I don't bake enough as it is, I evolve into an incessant dough-on-her-face monster around Christmas. Possibly because it's too cold to be outside, possibly because I love winter and when I'm happy I cook. 
So, I'm going to show you my latest creation: Sticky banana & salted caramel muffins, with a coconut and peanut glaze. 

Ingredients
90g melted butter (cooled)
270g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
130g demerara sugar
2 tsp salted caramel flavouring/vanilla extract
2 large ripe bananas
2 large eggs
135ml milk

For Glaze and icing
2 tablespoons course coconut oil
1 table spoon peanut butter
Desiccated coconut sprinkle for garnish/decoration
Icing Sugar
Salted caramel flavouring

To prepare
So, preheat your oven to 200C and when it's time to put the dough in, lower it to 190C.
Sift the flour, baking powder, the spices and bicarbonate of soda in a big bowl and add the sugar. Stir it all well.
With a fork, beat the eggs with the flavouring, the melted butter and the milk. Mash the bananas really well and add those into the wet ingredients. 
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture. Stir it but don't overdo it or play with the mixture too thoroughly. 

Fill your muffin cases and put them in your baking tray.
Bake for 18-20 minutes at 190C, or until you can tell they are coming away from the sides.
Pull them out and rub the glaze over the tops, and return them into the oven for another 5 minutes.

With water icing, I just mix a certain amount of spoonfuls of icing sugar with cold water until I get the consistency I want. If you have salted caramel add that into the icing mix too, and when the muffins have cooled, brush the icing on the tops. Sprinkle your coconut, put them in the fridge or wait an hour for the icing to set, and you're ready to go!

I got a lot of people trying out the florentines, so please go ahead and try these out too, let me know how you get on and show me your photos!

E x

Festive Recipe: Cherry & Almond Florentines

It is a day in the week, which means it's time to bake food and eat it excessively!
I thought I'd show you a really easy recipe for florentines since we are nearing Christmas, and it's half of this blog's namesake.
The good thing about florentines is that they makeshift easily into what you want them to taste like. I've gone slightly traditional, but you can add pistachios, walnuts, cranberries or any other grown up sounding ingredient that twelve-year-old-you would've scowled at.

Ingredients:
60g butter
60g demerara sugar
60g golden syrup
50g plain flour
200g chocolate

For the flavour:
60g glace cherries
60g almonds

Yeah, I am not joking. The ingredients and measurements are that straightforward. As long as the flavour ingredients equate to 120g, you can include most anything. Flaked almonds are necessary, but you can chop any nuts or currants to go with them. It is also worth noting that dark chocolate tastes best on florentines. They are covered in caramel and unless your sweet tooth is colossal, white and milk chocolate will only cause a seizure. 

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C and get three baking trays ready. DO NOT do a single thing without having baking paper in your house. 
Measure your sugar, syrup and butter and gently heat them in a pan til melted.
Remove pan from the heat, and add the flour, cherries and almonds. 
Stir until there is barely any caramel at the bottom of the bowl. 
Spoon sixteen teaspoons of the mixture onto your trays and bake them for 10 minutes. 
Once they're out let them harden and cool before putting them on a wire rack.
Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie and spread it on the flat side of the florentines. If you're feeling particularly insane, mark out a pattern with a fork. 
Put them in the fridge for an hour to cool.

Try the recipe and let me know how it goes, or better yet, I'm happy to test them for you.

E x

Autumn Recipe: Sweet Potato & Coconut Curry

Hello, there. Ever since moving out of my mamas house and living alone, I’ve begun to realise just how time consuming my favourite hobby can be and sometimes I can badly not be bothered with standing over a stove for six hours just to destroy my plate in a minute and a half.

So although I don’t claim to be the best cook on the planet, I’ve mastered the skill of throwing whatever is in my fridge together, making  something remotely tasty, all the while managing to remember NONE of what I did to tell you the next day.

But that’s what’s good with this recipe, if you can even call it that. It is a guideline, at best. Chucking your own herbs and spices in will ruin nothing.

I should also state that I use the word ‘curry’ lightly, and anyone of Asian descent should not send me complaints for doing an injustice to years of spicy food.

Ingredients

3 Sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped in chunky pieces

1 Aubergine, sliced/chopped

1 can of beans, (butter beans are my favourite, but haricot, kidney and chickpeas work too)

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic finely chopped OR spoon of lazy garlic

1 yellow pepper (but seriously, what’s the difference, use whatever colour you want, I hear some people have a weird aversion to yellow peppers)

1 tin Pride coconut milk (This is important, I think this is much better to use than Dunn’s River which is 100% liquid. Pride is half solid half liquid, and helps with a creamy consistency)

2 generous teaspoons of coconut oil (100% pure and coarse, in a jar)

1 healthy squeeze of tomato puree OR half a carton of passata

Method:

Put your chopped sweet potatoes, aubergine, tomato, spring onions, pepper and garlic into your glass Pyrex dish and coat them in coconut oil. Give them a good mix and put them in the oven, preheated to 200°C for fifteen minutes just to get started. Once you take the dish back out, add the beans, the coconut milk and the puree and again, mix it well. Now is the fun bit. Open up your spices drawer and have a party. I use cumin, chilli flakes, medium curry powder and cinnamon in mine, because it’s a sweet and spicy mix to go with the sweet potatoes. I have an illogical, irrational dislike of salt, but this would be the part where normal humans season their food, so feel free! Put your improv curry in the oven for about 50 minutes, opening the door regularly to stir the dish around and make sure the juices are soaking through.

Once it’s done, I add it to coconut rice, sprinkle paprika on top and fall into it head first. If you’re as lazy and single as I am, you’ll notice the spare food left over. What I do is mix the rice with the curry and I refrigerate it. In the morning, I fill tortilla wraps with the curry and take my sexy burritos to work.

Let me know how it goes, and if you made any changes which you think make it way tastier. Show me your photos!

Emily

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