Banana Breakfast Muffins

I was inspired this week to try out the September recipe from Waitrose; Spiced Banana Loaf. This new twist on a classic recipe uses the somewhat unusual ingredient of Weetabix…..yeah I didn’t really get it either. 

Anyone who has ever had Weetabix for breakfast, lunch,dinner, supper e.t.c. before will know that they soak up the milk like nobody’s business. I mean leave the room for like two minutes and its like - wheres the milk gone? With this idea in mind Weetabix would actually be a pretty decent baking ingredient as it soaks up liquid and binds your mixture together. 

For this cake you will need: 

3 Weetabix crumbled 

100g sultanas

150ml milk

250g light brown sugar

2 eggs

2 ripe bananas

120g melted butter

150g self-raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp ground ginger

However I revised the ingredients list a bit and added muesli - mostly because I was short on sultanas as well as nutmeg and cranked up the volume on the spices.  I decided to make muffins instead of (ok maybe as well as) a loaf and as they contain not one but two different varieties of breakfast cereals they would be to the perfect way to break your fast in the morning. 

When making a banana  cake of any variety I like to use frozen bananas as i believe that once frozen taste more bananary? Anyone know why this is?

Preheat the oven to 170c and prepare the muffin tin. I’m using bright and colourful muffin cases because who doesn't love to be woken up with bright bold colours……actually don’t answer that.

For the first step crumb your Weetabix in a bowl - as this will disintegrate when cook anyway you don't need to worry about living it a bit chunky. Add the sultanas and/or muesli and cover with milk. Set aside until all of the milk is soaked up. 

Meanwhile which the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy before adding the butter, flour, bicarb, spices. I also added pecans and walnuts to add extra texture. Combine well. 

Lastly stir in the Weetabix mixture before distributing evenly in the muffin cases. 

Bake for 40-45 minutes. 

Why aren't my cookies chewy?

You would think that baking cookies would be really simple but there my friend you would be mistaken because if you want to recreate the soft, chewy cookies that you would find at a bakery or shop, well I don’t want to say that it is an exact science….but it kind of is.

Generally speaking I have found there are two different types of biscuits:

1. the traditional shortbread type 
2. cookies: either of the chewy or crunchy varieties

Obviously there are many variations with different flavours and textures etc. yet the main difference in these two types that I have noticed is the addition of an egg or two.

Egg-actly the right amount

Eggs are used in baking for a variety of reasons including leavening, structure or binding, richness and even colour. Adding an extra yolk, as I will be doing in my recipe later on, will give my cookies a richer flavour and adds the moisture that helps to keep the cookies soft.

Type of sugar

A lot of cookie recipes that I have seen ask for you to use two different sugars and this is not just because they want to make your life more difficult. Cookies made with white sugar or sweetener have the tendency to be hard and crunchy whereas if you use brown sugar or molasses; hey presto yummy soft cookie.

A mixture of both will give you the best of both worlds.

Chill your dough

Cookie dough that has just been mixed and is still slightly warm is more likely to spread out in the oven. If your cookies are too thin they will no doubt be crunchy.  As with most dough based recipes I find that is always a good idea to chill the mix in the fridge for half an hour .

Cooking time

If you leave the tray in the oven just a moment too long your soft chewy cookies will be ruined so remember what Mad Eye Moody taught you: constant vigilance.

Remove the cookies from the oven when they are lightly golden around the edges yet still soft on top. They will be very soft to the touch so leave them to rest on the baking tray (they may still be cooking at this point) before moving to a cooling rack.

Right well now we’ve covered all of that troubleshooting stuff its about time that I let you in on the recipe right?

250g plain flour

2g baking powder

170g (melted) butter

200g brown sugar

100g caster sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

325g chocolate chips/chunks 

Cream the butter and sugars in a bowl until light and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs and vanilla before adding in the flour and baking powder. 

Stir until combined.

Finally add the chocolate chips or whatever else you are putting in the cookies.

Chill the dough in the fridge for half an hour 

Preheat the oven to 170c

Spoon a heaped teaspoon or walnut sized blob onto a baking tray but don’t flatten it or try to make it look even as the flatter the cookie the more likely it is to be crunchy.


Bake for 15-17 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges.

Remove from the oven but leave the cookies on the tray for a few minutes as they are still cooking and are very soft. If you try to move them too soon your cookies will break.

Banana and blueberry muffins

It's national cupcake day! So to mark the occasion I'm making muffins....

Before I could start I had to ask myself what kind of muffins did I actually want to make? Initially I was thinking about a classic blueberry muffin - I mean who doesn't like a fresh batch of blueberry muffins.

We have lots of bananas in the house though so I need to use them......and chocolate chips....ooh the possibilities are endless.

Some differences between cupcakes and muffins are really quite obvious even before you have taken a bite. Muffins are large and mostly undecorated whilst cupcakes tend to be a bit on the smaller side and are often decorated with icing or frosting, sometimes lavishly.

However the main difference between the two sweet treats is that cupcakes follow a cake recipe whereas muffins follow more of a bread type recipe. The creaming method is hardly ever used when making muffins whilst it is most common in cupcakes; this is because the cupcake needs to be light and fluffy and therefore requires a lot of air to be incorporated into the mixture.

Therefore you can tell the difference between a cupcake and a muffin by its texture: cupcakes are light and fluffy whilst muffins have a thicker, denser texture.

Similarly cupcakes tend to contain more sugar (and thats not just because of all that icing. So if asked for a 'healthy bake' steer towards to muffin spectrum.

I have based my recipe roughly on this one by the Hairy Bikers yet true to form the actual recipe used varies quite a bit.

Now when I researched different recipes using banana they all said to mash it: I imagine this is because it gives the mix a more uniform banana flavour. I however decided to ignore this and slice them instead, thus adding an element of surprise when you come across a pocket of banana.

I chopped my walnuts into irregular chunks for the same reason.


For the muffins you will need:

250g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 ripe bananas (sliced)
150g blueberries
100g white chocolate chips
185ml milk
6 tbsp honey or sugar if you prefer
50g butter (melted)
50g walnuts (roughly chopped
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 180C

Line a cupcake tray with paper cases

Add the flour and baking powder into a large bowl making a well in the centre.

Pour in the melted butter, milk, honey and lastly the egg. Stir until incorporated.

Fold in all the additional ingredients being careful not to over stir the fruit as you will bruise the fruit and cause the juices to come pouring out.

Transfer into the cases and bake for 17-20 minutes.

Summer Of Matcha: Matcha Ginger Zinger

I'm taking part in EatCleanTea's 'Summer Of Matcha' challenge to concoct a refreshing summery drink that isn't full of additives, sweeteners and stuff that is generally bad for you.  However true to form things started to go a bit pear shaped.....and not just because I was using a pear.

My recipe is based on the Matcha and Ginger  variety so I started things off by brainstorming flavours combinations for my juice and finally decided on  ginger (from the matcha) + lemon + carrot.  plus extra stuff but more on that later.

Ginger and lemon are both sialagogues meaning that they increase the flow of saliva and other gastric juices i.e. are good for digestion. These ingredients with the added goodness of the carrot make the juice good for cleansing plus its also a diuretic so go flush those toxins away.

This recipe took some trial an error to get it right; I mean first I put in too much lemon juice and it was too lemony so I added more ginger....

Yet as the name suggests the 'matcha and ginger' already contains the ginger so I actually just ended up with very a strong and spicy flavour. I tried to counteract this by adding spinach and extra water but nevertheless have a strong juice that whacks a punch to be quite honest (as long as you don't over dilute it)

Anyway to make this tart yet detoxifying juice you will need

• 2-3 carrots
• 1 pear 
• juice of half a lemon (or you could do what I did and use a whole rather large lemon and then panic and put lots of ginger in to cover u your mistake)
• 400ml water
• 1 tsp matcha and ginger
• a handful of spinach
• 4-6 ice cubes

Add all your ingredients to blender ( I used a Vitamix) and whizz until smooth. I have not peeled my fruit and veg (besides the ginger) and therefore my juice is a bit 'bitty'