Various Cakes

Variations on the basic sponge cake recipe used for the banana muffins. The one at the top is an apple cake, basically identical to the banana muffins, except with an apple instead of banana, and baked in a bread loaf tin.

The others are chocolate muffins, where half of the flour is replaced with cocoa powder.

Pumpkin Soup

This is a nice, hearty Autumnal soup. I decided to make it after we received a pumpkin in an organic mixed veggie box that we ordered. It's sort of based on a few recipes I found via google, but none of them really matched what ingredients were available.

Ingredients

A pumpkin
6 spring onions (or 1 onion - I only had spring onions at the time)
1 litre vegetable stock
A small amount of butter.


Method

Chop the pumpkin into 1cm cubes. Finely chop the onion.
Melt the butter in the pan, and fry the onion until it goes opaque.
Mix in the pumpkin, then pour over the stock.
Boil until the pumpkin is soft - for me this took about 25 minutes.
Leave to cool, then blend with a blender.

At this point ours tasted delicious, but resembled baby food, so it may need watering down a bit before eating.

Blackberry and Apple Jelly

Following this recipe that I found via google:

http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/blackberry-and-apple-jam-recipe-430

I made some blackberry and apple jelly with blackberries that we picked last month, and some of Mum & Dad's large amount of cooking apples. The only variation being that for the first half I ran out of caster sugar and had to use some cinnamon caster sugar as well, so that'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

The other thing is that I think I used too much water in the initial simmering stage, so I ended up having to boil the whole lot for about 15 minutes, rather than 8.

Banana Muffins

This is a fab use-things-up recipe that is based on an old, basic sponge cake recipe that I vaguely remember from when I was young.

Ingredients

4Oz / 113g Butter
4Oz / 113g Self-raising flour
4Oz / 113g Sugar
2 medium eggs
2 small or 1 large over-ripe banana
1 handful of chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

Partially melt the butter in the microwave, or leave it in a warm place until it's just mushy. Mix in the flour and sugar, then add the eggs and mix until you have a consistently gloopy mixture with no lumps. Now, break up or chop the banana into small 1cm-ish size pieces and stir into the mixture. At this stage, if you want, you can add a handful of chopped walnuts.

Spoon the mixture into muffin cases or tins, and bake in the oven at gas mark 6 / 200C for about 25 minutes - check they are cooked by putting a knife into the middle of one - if it comes out clean, they are ready.

Allow to cool before trying to take them out of the tin as they tend to fall apart otherwise.

Notes

I have tried this with both muscovado sugar and caster sugar, with massively different results - both very nice, but the caster sugar makes a lighter, more sponge-cake cake, and the muscovado make a heavier more american muffin like cake.

You could also replace the banana with left-over chocolate, if such a thing existed. I have a theory it might work with other fruit like apple, but haven't tried it yet.

Lunchtime wraps

A very quick, easy and extremely tasty meal that I just had for my lunch!

Ingredients:

1 flour tortilla (or corn, depends what you prefer)
1 large tomato
Some lettuce
Some mozzarella

Recipe:

Wash and slice the tomato and lettuce.

Slice some mozzarella - how much depends on how much you want!

Place the lettuce, tomato and mozzarella in a straight line, in the middle of the tortilla, going from about a third of the way up, to the top.

Take one side of the tortilla, fold it over the filling, and wrap it tight under the filling.

Roll the other side over the first side, making a tube of filling.

Fold the bottom third over the bottom of the tube, to prevent things falling out the end when you bite it.

Eat it from the top! :-)

Now for variations you can add pretty much whatever you want, but I just added salad cream, much to Kate's disgust.