Banana Oat Muffins

This recipe is a favourite in our house, not only because it makes really delicious, moist banana muffins, but also because it's a fantastic way to use up over-ripe banana, which we always seem to have leftover at the end of the week. I'll usually make a batch of these at the weekend, then wrap them up individually in cling film once they've cooled so that I can freeze them. I have found that if I get one out in the morning and let it thaw in the cling film, it will be ready to eat with a cup of tea at lunch time!

Now, you may be thinking that these muffins don't sound particularly healthy, and you'd be right. I mean there are worse things for you, but they do contain rather a lot of fat and sugar, so why are they being posted in a month I've dedicated to healthier baking? Well, I decided to experiment with substitutes and make a reduced fat and sugar version, and a low-fat sugar-free version of this recipe, to see how they turned out. I think the original version is still the best, but the other versions are tasty too. The most interesting thing about doing this was looking at what went into the muffins and what I could use instead!

I've provided the approximate calories, fat and saturated fat content of each recipe below, so I'd also like to include a disclaimer. I am not a nutritional expert in any way, shape or form. I'm just a girl who likes cake. I worked out the calorie, fat and sat fat content of each recipe using a pen, paper and calculator and the information found on the food packets. This information could vary dependent on the brands you use, on the size of your muffin pan, and on how much you trust my math skills. Values are given as a guidance only!!

Ingredients

For the original (and tastiest) variety     Reduced Fat and Sugar                 Low-Fat and Sugar-Free  

125g margarine                                           50g margarine                                  3 large over-ripe bananas  

2 large over-ripe bananas                            2 large over-ripe bananas                 125g applesauce

50g caster sugar                                          75g applesauce                                75g honey

50g soft brown sugar                                   50g soft brown sugar                       2 medium eggs

1tbsp runny honey                                       50g honey                                       100g self raising flour

2 medium eggs                                            2 medium eggs                                 100g porridge oats

100g self raising flour                                  50g self raising flour

100g porridge oats                                     150g porridge oats

Calories = 284                                           Calories = 227                                  Calories = 189
Fat = 13.25g                                              Fat = 7.14g                                       Fat = 2.35g
Sat Fat = 3.35g                                          Sat Fat = 1.76g                                 Sat Fat = 0.56g

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 15 – 20 minutes

Makes 8 muffins

1. If using, melt the margarine in the microwave and place to one side to cool.
2. Preheat the over to gas mark 6, and line a muffin tray with cases.
3. Break the bananas onto chunks, then mash them with a fork. Try to mash them up as much as you can to make sure there are no big lumps – the runnier the better!
4. Add the sugars (if using) and all of the wet ingredients to the banana. Beat together with the fork until all of the ingredients have combined.
5. Add the flour and the oats to the mixture, and stir with the fork until just combined.
6. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases, filling each one around ¾ full, then bake for 15-20 minutes until dark golden brown all over. Allow the muffins to cool in the muffin tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Happy Thoughts

x

Vegan Apple Muffins

Happy New Year, friends!

Did you all over-indulge over the holiday season? I know I did! So, after spending the whole of December posting Christmas recipes, I thought it would be a good idea to have January be detox month. So, this month I'll be posting as many healthy(ish) recipes I can muster, starting with these Vegan apple muffins.

These muffins are tasty, moist and have a lovely subtle apple and almond flavour, and they are dairy free (if you want them to be!) I used sunflower spread and almond milk, so all in all these muffins are fairly healthy, but if you're not on a dairy-restricted diet, cows milk and standard margarine will work just fine. This is a recipe that Alex and I love, as once the muffins have cooled, you can wrap them tightly in cling film and then put in the freezer. If you take the muffin out of the freezer in the morning and allow it to defrost still wrapped, it will be fully thawed and ready to eat by lunch time!

Ingredients:

60g sunflower spread (or margarine, if making the non-Vegan variety)

2 eating apples

100g soft brown sugar (plus extra for topping)

200ml almond milk (or standard milk, if non-Vegan)

2tsp baking powder

1tsp mixed spice

150g plain flour

100g wholemeal flour

Prep time: 10 – 15 minutes

Cook time: 15 – 20 minutes

Makes 9 muffins

1. Melt the sunflower spread in the microwave for 15 seconds, then place to one side to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a muffin tray with cases.
3. Peel the apples and then grate them into a medium sized mixing bowl, (watch for those pips!)
4. Add the sugar, milk and cooled sunflower spread to the apple and beat with a fork until the sugar has dissolved.
5. Add the baking powder, mixed spice and both flours to the bowl. Stir into the mixture with the fork until the ingredients come together to form a thick batter.
6. Spoon the batter into the muffin cases, filling each around ¾ full. Sprinkle a little extra brown sugar over the top of each muffin, then place on the middle shelf of the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown all over.
7. Allow the muffins to cool in the muffin pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the muffins have cooled, you can wrap them tightly in cling film and then put in the freezer. If you take the muffin out of the freezer in the morning and allow it to defrost still wrapped, it will be fully thawed and ready to eat by lunch time!

Happy Thoughts
x

Chocolate Christmas Pudding Muffins

I'm going to let you in on a little secret - there is  type of cake I really hate. I know. It's sacrilege! Completely and utterly against my religion! I should be banned from the bake-blogging world immediately!! But it's true, I really can't stand fruit cakes. That includes fruit puddings too, so Christmas cake and Christmas pudding are not my friends. You see, I have a passionate dislike for raisins, currants and sultanas, and as fruit cakes contain an abundance of those things, we've never seen eye to eye. Or cake to mouth. So when I wanted to make some mini Christmas pudding for a Christmas party a few years back, I had to come up with a suitable alternative. I went with chocolate chip muffins. It worked for me!!

These muffins pre-date my blogging days, but they got a lot of complements so I wrote the recipe down in a notebook. Flipping through that notebook made me quite nostalgic, and I found a couple of SWEET recipes to share in the near future! I think I'm going to make some mini - muffin versions of these this Christmas, I'll post the photos below when I do!

Ingredients:

For the muffins:
100g soft brown sugar
150g self raising flour
3 heaped tbsp cocoa powder
100ml vegetable oil
50ml milk
2 medium eggs, beaten
100g chocolate chips

To decorate:
150g icing sugar
A few drops of water
50g green ready-to-roll icing
25g red ready-to-roll icing


Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Makes 8 muffins

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark four and grease a muffin tin really well.
2. Tip your sugar, flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl, then stir in the oil, milk, and beaten eggs until all the ingredients combined to form a smooth batter. Fold in the chocolate chips.
3. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin, filling each hole 3/4 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes until firm but springy to touch. Leave the muffins to cool completely in the tin.
4. Whilst the muffins are cooling, make your holly leaves and berries with the fondant icing. For the leaves, I rolled out the green icing and used a sharp knife to cut out a holly leaf shape, which is why mine are all uneven! You could also use a cutter, if you have one! For the berries, I simply rolled up small pieces of the red icing in my hands.
5. Once cool, remove the muffins from tin. You'll be serving the muffins bottom up, so you may need to cut a little away from the top of each muffin to make sure they are level.
6. Eat the cut off bits (this step is very important!)
7. Put a wire rack or cooling rack over a tray or sheet of greaseproof paper (it's could get messy during the next few steps!) then place your muffins, bottom up, on top of this.
8. Now it's time to make the icing. I made mine ever so slightly too runny, which is ever so easy to do, so always best to err on the side of caution. Pour the icing sugar into a bowl, then stir in the water 1tsp at a time until you have a spreadable, but still thick icing. I know it's tempting to add the water more than 1tsp at a time, but trust me - this kind of icing goes from solid to runny in 2 seconds flat. Be patient!
9. Once your icing is of the desired consistency, spread a little over the top of each upside-down muffin, letting it go over the edge and start to dribble down the sides. If, like me, you made your icing too runny, the icing will probably stream down the sides, rather than dribble, and you'll be pleased you placed that greaseproof paper underneath to catch all the icingy mess!
10. Place your holly leaves and berries on top of the icing, then leave to set.
11. Serve with a cup of tea and some Christmas cheer!

Happy Thoughts
x

Rat-Patootie

Disney Pixar # 8 - Ratatouille

Ratatouille, along with the next film, Wall-E, were the two Disney Pixar films that I really, really struggled to come up with ideas for. They also ended up being my two favourite ideas of this series! For Ratatouille, I really couldn't come up with anything better than to make some little fondant chef hats and veggies to decorate the top of the cupcakes, but then one day I had a random thought: what if I bake ratatouille (of the roasted vegetable variety) INTO the cupcakes...?

I suppose this idea is a little crazy creative!

It actually worked out really, really well! I started with this recipe for ratatouille, and thought about how I could incorporate the ingredients for ratatouille into my cupcakes. In the end I left out the onion and garlic, as I thought they would be too overpowering, and also left out the aubergine as I couldn't figure out how to include it. I also used half olive oil (as per the ratatouille recipe) and half sunflower oil, as again I thought the olive oil may be too overpowering. All in all, I think it was a worthwhile attempt at ratatouille, and they tasted great! (especially when still a little warm!!)

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 20-25 minutes
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients:
250g self raising flour
50g soft light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
pinch of black pepper
120ml milk
2 medium eggs
45ml olive oil
45ml sunflower oil
1 medium sized courgette (around 200g whole)
3 pepperdew peppers from a jar
4 sun-dried tomatoes from a jar
1 sprig fresh basil (around 6-7 leaves)

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a bun tray with cases.
2. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and pepper into a large bowl and place to one side.
3. Whisk the milk and eggs together, then stir in both kinds of oil.
4. Peel and grate the courgette and pour into the wet mixture. Chop the peppers, tomatoes and basil into small pieces then stir into the wet mixture.
5. Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture a little at a time until all the ingredients have combined. Fill the  cupcake cases 3/4 of the way up with better, then bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown on top, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
6. Leave to cool slightly in the pan before removing from the cupcake cases. Best served still warm!

Ratatouille Cupcakes

Next time it's Wall-E, and I'll be making cupcakes as they might appear in 2805!

Happy Thoughts
x

I Never Look Back, Darling! It Distracts from the Now.

Disney/Pixar # 6 - The Incredibles

OK, so strictly speaking I broke the rules with this one. I had said at the beginning that I would only be baking cupcakes for the Disney Pixar Collection, but you can probably tell from the photos above that I actually ended up baking muffins this time. But, there is a very good reason for this. You see, a cupcake would have been to small to contain the really INCREDIBLE stuff inside...

.

.

.

.

.

TA DA!!

I don't really know where or how I came up with this idea, but it was very tricky to execute and I'm not entirely pleased with how they turned out. Still, they were suitably impressive, and tasted very,very good! The premise is that the cakes would look normal from the outside, like The Incredibles. But just like The Incredibles, they'd be completely SUPER on the inside.

Jack-Jack approves.

One further comment I'd like to make is that with this recipe you'll have a lot of cake scraps left over. Seriously, A LOT!! Don't throw these away - just pop them in a sealed container and into the freezer and use them to make cake pops in the future!

Prep time: 45 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes (total)
Makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

For The Incredibles logo (for the inside)
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
100g self raising flour
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 heaped teaspoons cocoa powder
yellow and red food colouring
1tbsp mixed fruit jam

For the red velvet muffins:

60g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

red food colouring

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

120 ml buttermilk

150g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 1/2 tsp white vinegar

6 white chocolate chips

For the frosting:
75g cream cheese
50g shortening
250g icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, and line a bun tray with cupcake cases
2. Start by beating together the margarine and caster sugar until smooth and creamy, then beat in the egg. Sift in the flour and fold into the mixture, adding a drop or two of vanilla essence, to taste. 
3. Pour half of the mixture into a separate bowl, and add the cocoa powder to this. Pour this into 6 of the prepared cupcake cases. 
4. Going back to the remaining vanilla cake mixture, add a few drops of yellow food colouring until the desired shade is reached. Spoon yellow batter into three of the prepared cupcake cases. Add a drop of red food colouring to the remaining batter to turn it orange, and use this to fill the final three cupcake cases. Bake all 12 cupcakes for 15-28 minutes, until springy to touch. Place on a wire rack to cool completely.
5. Turn these cakes out of their cases. Cut an oval shape out of the chocolate cupcakes, around 1cm thick, then cut these in half. Cut the yellow cupcakes into 1cm strips, then cut the orange cupcakes into really thin strips. (See the images below for a much clearer illustration of what I'm on about here!) Stick the brown, yellow and orange bits together with a little jam to form six "incredibles" logos.

6. Put the "logos" to one side whilst you make the red velvet muffin batter. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, and line a muffin tray with paper cases. 

7. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg.

8.  In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa, red food colouring and vanilla extract to make a thick paste. Add this to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly until combined. Stir in half of the buttermilk, followed by half of the flour, then repeat with the remaining buttermilk and flour until both are fully incorporated. add the bicarbonate of soda and vinegar and beat until you have a smooth, even batter.

9. Place a teaspoon of batter into each muffin case, then push a logo down into this. Cover the logos with the remaining batter and smooth the top with the back of a spoon. Place a single chocolate chip on the side of each muffin to help you remember which way the logo faces once baked! Put these in the oven for 25-30 minutes until deep red and firm to touch.

10. Once the muffins are completely cool, prepare the frosting. Beat all of the ingredients together until smooth and creamy (and tasty) then pipe onto the muffins. Serve and enjoy!

Next time it's Cars!

Happy Thoughts
x