Banana and Chocolate Muffins

These muffins are the result of many attempts at perfecting a banana and chocolate chip recipe.  I have experimented with this many times - mainly because we seem to always have 2 or 3 bananas that are just too ripe to eat, but not so over-ripe that they should be put in the compost.

They are always a huge hit in our house, and work particularly well as an after-school snack for the 5-yr-old.  I do still occasionally make my grandmother's banana bread when I have some old ripe bananas hanging around, but these muffins have become a firm favourite.

I've not tried them with nuts yet, but I'm sure they would taste good with walnuts or pecan nuts in them.

Recipe

Ingredients

125ml sunflower oil
250g plain flour
2 eggs
100g caster sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 medium ripe bananas
100g dark chocolate chips

Method

Whisk the eggs, maple syrup and oil together
Mash the bananas
Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl together
Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together
Mix in the bananas and chocolate chips

Divide equally between 20 small muffin cases and bake at 200 C for 15-20 mins, until golden brown on top

Recipe Evolution

These are based on this recipe in Nigella Feast.  By replacing the butterscotch chips with dark chocolate (as recommended by the good lady herself)  they are dairy-free.   I reduced the amount of chocolate by a third initially to reduce the propoints, but then the next time I made them added some maple syrup as with less chocolate they were slightly less sweet.

Weightwatchers

These come out as 4 propoints each using the recipe builder on the website.  If you make more or fewer muffins from the mixture then adjust the propoints accordingly.

Interaction

I tweeted a picture of these muffins and was tweeted back by @ww_uk asking me to send them my recipe so they would publish it.  I duly did so, but didn't really expect to hear anything back. A few days later though, they replied, asking if it was ok for them to share it via social media and when I said yes, they tweeted this:

Fancy something indulgent but low in ProPoints values? Try @bakingdoctor’s chocolate&banana muffin recipe, just 4 PPV! twitter.com/ww_uk/status/2…
— Weight Watchers (@ww_uk) November 1, 2012

I gained 7 new followers as a result, and a great feeling of satisfaction.  Goodness only knows how happy I would be if I ever published an article or a book!

Halloween Cookies

I've had a break from this blog for nearly a year - as I had to concentrate on revising.  I've finally passed the exam and now never have to sit one again.  I can't tell you what a relief that is.  I also can't really believe that I was still taking exams well into my 30s - definitely one of the downsides of choosing medicine as a career.

Now that have more time on my hands I'm getting right back into my baking, and have been particularly motivated by watching the latest series of Great British Bakeoff.

I've always enjoyed making cookies and biscuits using a wide variety of cookie-cutters, so when the kids were invited to a Halloween party it was the perfect excuse for me to get out my tried-and-tested pumpkin cutter and new-and-exciting ghost cutter.  Taking food with us to a party serves two purposes - it's always lovely for the host to receive home-baked goods and it means that the 3-year-old is definitely allowed to eat something sweet.

I've tried these out with a few flavour combination, but find that orange and cinnamon works best for autumn.  The kids like them in all their incarnations (so far), which is pretty unusual, and explains why I've so much practice making them.

Recipe

Ingredients - Biscuits

90g sunflower spread
100g caster sugar
1 egg
230g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
zest of 1 orange
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Ingredients - Icing

100g icing sugar, sieved
1 egg white (I use powdered, as then it is kid-safe)
Juice of 1 orange

Method

Cream sunflower spread and caster sugar.  Beat in the egg, orange zest and cinnamon.  Mix in the flour and baking powder to make a dough.
Cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about an hour

Roll out thinly and cut into your desired shapes

Bake for 8-10 minutes at 180 C

Meanwhile, make the icing sugar by combining the icing sugar and egg white with enough orange to make a spreading consistency and colour as required.

When the biscuits are cool enough, ice them.  The icing will set within about 30 minutes, so you have to work relatively quickly at this stage

Recipe evolution

This is based on Nigella's 'cut-out cookies' from her Feast book, but dairy-free and flavoured for autumn

Variations

Nigella's original recipe calls only for vanilla (1/2 tsp), with plain icing.  Lemon also works well (zest of 1 lemon in the dough and some lemon juice in the icing)

WeightWatchers

Using the recipe builder this works out as 2 propoints per biscuit (if 40 biscuits made - adjust points accordingly if making more or fewer biscuits)

Pumpkins from our vegetable patch last year