My Mum's Banana Bread Recipe!

This banana bread (although we call it "chocolate chip and banana cake") has been in my family for a number of years now! Not centuries, but definitely over a decade. It's so easy to make and is the perfect way to use up over-ripe bananas. In fact, I recommend using over ripe bananas as they're sweeter and will mash more easily. Chocolate chips are an amazing addition to this cake, but we didn't have any...

Anyway, you don't want to read a bunch of waffle from me, you just want me to get on with the recipe!! (If you'd like to see this cake being made, check out the video at the bottom of this post)

For this cake, you will need:

2 bananas

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

170g butter (or margarine)

225g caster sugar

285g self raising flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 eggs

57g chocolate chips *optional*

1) Preheat your oven to 170­°C

2) Melt the butter completely, and then stir in the sugar. Be sure the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat.

3) In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, bicarb and salt. This will get rid of any lumps in the flour.

4) Stir in the butter and sugar mixture, making sure it is well-combined.

5) Peel and mash your bananas, and then add them to the rest of the mix, stirring thoroughly. Throw in your vanilla extract.

6) Beat your eggs, and then add them to the rest of the mix too. One again, stir thoroughly!

*At this point, you can add chocolate chips. I recommend leaving the mixture to cool first as otherwise the chocolate will melt!*

7) Pour the batter into your tin of choice. An 8'' round tin works well, but we used a 900g loaf tin, which also did the job delightfully.

8) Bake for 50-60 minutes. Baking time can vary, especially depending on what type of tin you use. Our cake took a full hour, and we don't have a fan-oven. Check your cake is cooked by inserting a skewer. When it comes out clean, it's done!

My mum swears that this cake is best made two days before expected consumption, that's if you can wait that long!!

Chocolate Orange Hot Cross Buns

One of my favourite parts of Easter is the food, and I feel the same with Christmas as well! I decided it's time to make Hot Cross Buns! I wanted to take them into work, but I was aware that one of the people I work with doesn't like dried fruit, so I decided to add my own spin on things with chocolate orange ones!

You will need:
4 cups plain flour
1.5 tsp mixed spice
14g dried yeast
1/4 cup caster sugar
350ml slightly warmed milk
2 lightly beaten eggs
300g dark chocolate chips
200g milk chocolate chips
Zest of 1 orange

Crosses:
1/2 cup of plain flour
1/2-1 cup of water

Glaze
3 tbsp orange juice
3 tbsp granulated sugar

1. Combine the flour, spice, yeast and sugar in a bowl and mix. Add in the milk and the eggs and mix until the dough comes together. Add in the chocolate chips and orange zest and continue to mix.

2. Knead the dough for around 8-10 minutes and it's smooth and elastic. Pop it back in the bowl, cover it in cling film and leave it in a warm place for an hour, until it's doubled in size.

3. Knead the dough a little more and then split it into 12 equal sized balls. Place them on a lined baking tray. Cover once again in cling film and pop into the warm place for about half an hour.

4. Meanwhile, mix together the flour and water until it's a smooth paste. Add the water little by little, not all at once. Put this into a resealable bag/piping bag, snip off a little corner and pipe crosses onto the now-risen buns. Cook the buns at 190 degrees for about 20-25 minutes.

5. When they are done, take them out of the oven and transfer onto the cooling rack. While they cool slightly, heat up the orange juice and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens. With a pastry brush, brush the warm glaze over the warm hot cross buns and enjoy!

Cheat's Fudge - Cookies & Cream

I found some instructions online on how to make cheats fudge, and I knew that I had to try it! The recipe I found was for just a basic dark chocolate fudge, but I wanted to switch things up.

Cookies and Cream has been one of my favourite flavourings for a long time. I have an extremely sweet tooth, and I'm not ashamed of that! So it only seemed logical to me to try out a cookies and cream fudge, because, well, Oreo's are the best thing ever.

All you will need is:
350g of White Chocolate
1 397g tin of condensed milk
1 pack of Oreos.

That's it... Madness I know! Watch my video to see how it's made :)

Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Recipe

So Sunday was stocktake day at the shop I work in. I work in a bead shop so this involves a lot of concentrating, counting and weighing. We knew it was going to be a long day, so it only made sense that cake should be there too!

My contribution to the sweet treats were some delicious chocolate chunk shortbread, which were cut out into adorable teapot shapes! (How cute is my crockery btw??)

To make, these cute shortbreads, you will need:
225g unsalted butter
110g caster sugar
110g corn flour
225g plain flour
1 pinch of salt
50g dark chocolate
50 milk chocolate


Method:

1) Line your baking trays, either with baking paper or grease with butter.

2) Whisk together the butter and caster sugar until the colour is a pale yellow. This should take a couple of minutes. Don't forget to scrape down the sides of your bowl with the spatula! Sift in the flour, corn flour and pinch of salt into the butter/sugar mixture and mix until combined. I found a wooden spoon easiest for this as corn flour will fluff up and go everywhere...

3) Cut your chocolate into chunks and add to the mixture. If you'd prefer to use pre-chunked chocolate or choc chips, that's also fine! Mix the chocolate in well.Bring the dough together and put it onto some baking paper. Put another piece of baking paper on top and roll out the dough until it is about 1cm thick. The baking paper will stop the dough sticking to your rolling pin!

4) Cut out the biscuits into the shape you want and pop them onto the lined baking tray. After you have cut all your shapes out, put them into the fridge for 30 minutes while your oven is preheating to 170 degrees celcius.

5) Put the biscuits into the oven for 20 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown in colour. Everyone's ovens are different so you may want to check frequently.

6) After cooking, leave the biscuits on the baking tray for a couple of minutes to cool before transferring to a wire cooling rack. I personally made a small tray out of foil to put until my cooling rack. This is because you now want to sprinkle sugar on top of the biscuits, and sugar will go everywhere unless it's contained! Then you're finished :)

Delicious Strawberry Yoghurt Ice Lollies!

The boyfriend and I "treated ourselves" to some ice lolly moulds from ASDA a couple of weeks ago. I mean, they were only £2.50 so we were hardly breaking the bank! That evening, we decided to whiz up some strawberries, add some yoghurt and a touch of sugar then freeze them to see what happened. Turns out we'd made delicious lollies!

The lolly mould we've bought (image from ASDA)

We were clever and didn't note down quantities but that day we had enough mixture to make 6 lollies. I decided to film a video for The C of C on YouTube on how I made these, as I'd had a request via my Facebook page so here we go!

To make 5 lollies, you will need:

20 Strawberries (The strawbs I used were pretty small!)
5 tbsp Low Fat Natural Yoghurt
2 tsp Granulated Sugar

Utensils:

Lolly Mould (or yoghurt pots that have been washed out and lolly sticks)
Stick Blender
Spatula
Spoon
Teaspoon
Jug
Chopping Board
Sharp Knife.

Start by hulling the strawberries (this just means taking off the leaves and stalk" and place 15 of them in the jug. Slice the other 5 strawberries thinly and place to one side as these will line our moulds.

Whiz up the strawbs in the jug using the stick blender until there are no lumps left. Scrape excess juice off the blender using the spatula.

Spoon in 5 spoonfuls of the yoghurt and give it a mix. Taste and if it isn't sweet enough for you, add the sugar. I find that 2 tsp is enough, but you can add more if you like.

Line the lolly moulds with the thinly sliced strawberry, just adding slices sporadically. Pour in the strawb-yoghurt mixture.

Gently bang the mould on the counter a couple of times to pop any air bubbles, add your sticks and pop the lollies into the freezer for at least 3 hours.

If you can't get the lollies out of the moulds once frozen, run the mould under some cold tap water for around 10-15 secs and you should find that the lolly comes right out!

Enjoy!

Recipe Review: SORTED Food's Chocolate Orange Cheesecake Brownie

I am a huge fan of baking. I love producing cakes and brownies that make people happy as they eat them, and obviously I enjoy eating them too! I had a job, before the one I currently have, that required me to bake muffins every single morning. The same ones... Every day... As well as preparing everything else for the day. Needless to say it was stressful. It put me off baking for a while, but after a 5-month hiatus, I'm back!!

When I saw the video that SORTED Food posted earlier this week, I knew that I had to make it! I really like SORTED Food as the food they make is very much student-friendly in the way that it is presented and most of their recipes have a lovely video uploaded to their YouTube channel so you can see exactly what each step should look like.

The recipe itself was extremely easy to follow. Making a brownie isn't rocket science, but the guys from SORTED food have made each step so clear and simple, not using a lot of technical terminology. I was a little reluctant to try out a new brownie recipe, as I have found my perfect recipe (thanks to the recommendation to one of my friends. Don't worry, I will share it with you in a later post), but it was surprisingly successful!

The only difference I would make is that I would melt the chocolate, butter and sugar over a pan of water instead of the microwave, but other than that, it worked out wonderfully! I think I may have undercooked my brownie a little, but it still tasted amazing.

The guys I live with definitely approve.

Doesn't it look amazing??

Here is the link to the recipe, you should definitely give it a shot!! http://sortedfood.com/#!/core/chocolateorangebrownie/