Category: Smart baking

The Steve Cake – banana loaf all snazzled up

 

This is my go to banana loaf or banana muffin recipe.  It uses up the sad little brown bananas you cant quite bring yourself to eat on account of them turning brown (dont even think about making it with un ripe ones because you will be making a cake with starch not fruit sugar). Because of the over ripe bananas not much sugar is needed and it is made with oil not butter so overall a pretty virtuous affair.  The method is a one bowl minimal mixing one so simplicity itself.  I always find chocolate and banana irresistible so I sometimes drizzle chocolate over the cake or put chocolate chunks inside. 

Ingredients for 12-16 muffins or 1 loaf cake (Double for the bundt cake)

  • 300g wholemeal flour
  • 3 bananas very ripe  (I freeze them) mashed or blended
  • 2 eggs
  • 75ml olive oil or sunflower oil
  • 100g sugar or 75g fructose
  • 250ml buttermilk or “kefir” or Romanian “lapte batut” 
  • 15g (3 tsp) baking powder
  • 5g (1tsp) baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) 
  • optional 200g walnut pieces/ chopped chunks of dark chocolate
  • if you must…a pinch of cinnamon 

To decorate the above cake, the quantities were doubled and 200g of dark chocolate melted with 2 tablespoons of olive oil to drizzle over, 200g almonds were toasted and chopped to sprinkle over

How To

Place all the dry ingredients in a large bowl

Carefully add the wet ingredients

Mix (I use a metal spoon) until the mix just comes together but do not over mix as this creates a tough leathery like cake

Spoon the fairly liquid batter/ mix into your tin/ mould

I bake this cake fairly gently at 160C as I don’t want the crust forming too fast and then blocking the rise. So for the muffins 16-18 mins and the bigger cakes 30-45 mins – until a toothpick comes out clean. 

Tips and Improvs

It is close to a bread so freezes brilliantly. Take out of the freezer and eat the muffins as breakfast on the run. 

 

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don’t do breakfast but if I do its dark chocolate (preferably neat) or black pudding. Nothing odd about that, nope nothing at all. So these little nuggets  cut it being very very chocolatey, not very sweet and with enough iron to boost the hemoglobin of a horse.

The method is “one bowl” and if you are not fussed with the vegan thing, add an egg as this just helps glue them together and reduce crumbles.

Ingredients  (12-15 cookies)

  • 120g coconut oil
  • 200g pureed dates (no stones) after they have soaked in water with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda overnight
  • 150g wholemeal flour (for gluten free use your GF flour combo)
  • 60g organic cocoa powder
  • 1 heaped tablespoon of peanut butter
  • 80g dark chocolate (70%) chopped into chunks
  • 50g crystallised ginger chunks
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • optional 1 x egg if not vegan

How To

Set the oven to 180C  Prepare baking sheets with baking paper or silicon sheets

Blend the dates into a smooth puree.  Add the coconut oil if it is solid and create a paste.

Measure all dry ingredients into a bowl.

Add the paste (and egg if you are using), and the chocolate and ginger pieces.

Gently mix until the dough comes together and has the consistency of plasticine (play doh) and comes away from the sides of the bowl.  The consistency is important – a knife stuck in the middle should stay there. You may need to add a little flour or water to adjust it.

Make balls of dough in your hands. Press down gently on the sheet to create a cookie.

Bake for 12-15 minutes depending on how fierce/ fan assisted your oven is.

Transfer to a cooling tray where they will firm up.  They keep for up to 1 week and freeze perfectly too.

Lazy leftovers fruit cake…a cake for all times

A gloriously laissez faire affaire full of bonhomie and warmth. It has its roots in the frugality of Nana’s war time fruit cake when eggs, butter and sugar were scarce. This was simply what you did for the generation that believed throwing away food was “the work of the devil”. Fast forward to these food sensitive times and we have a right on “recycled vegan low GI GF  gateau” oh trendy dears. Whatever its name..it is a cake for all times in every sense – judging by the number of second helpings this Easter and enthusiasm from the marauding feline contingent too.

 

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