Banana-manana Muffins

I love a banana muffin. I love one for breakfast, even though there's probably too much sugar in it for early in the day. Sometimes, it just doesn't matter.

I found this great recipe on Taste.com.au, for Warm Banana Muffins with custard, but I was just looking for a plain banana muffin recipe. This one looked great, so I just ignored the "add custard after they've baked" part. And what a great recipe. Simple, easy to put together, and the result? I tend to eat more than one when they come out of the oven. What could be a better recommendation than that!

Banana-manana Muffins! (OK that's just my name for them!)


Combined 1 1/4 cups of self raising flour (or, like I do 1 1/4 cups plain flour & 2 1/2 tsp of baking powder) and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a bowl.



Mash up two ripe bananas.


Mix into the mashed banana, 40gm butter, melted, 1 egg and 1/3 cup milk.


Add it to the dry mixture.


Mix it all up until combined. Spoon into greased muffin tins, or muffin cases in the tin. It should divide well between 4-6 jumbo/Texas muffin tins. I like to make big muffins with this mix, but making smaller ones (more cupcake size) works really well too, and you end up with about 8 muffins. Bake them @ 200C for 25 minutes until browning and cracked on top. Cool in tin for 5 minutes, and then turn out.


Devour!

Because it's a relatively small muffin batch, and due to the fact that you use 2 ripe bananas, the muffin is deliciously banana-centric and really moist.

Kept in an air-tight container, they last well for 3-4 days.

I can't recommend this recipe enough. It is SO good, wonderful, easy and what a result!

Warm Banana Muffins

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 1/4 cups self-raising flour, sifted
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 40g butter, melted and cooled
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 1/2 cups prepared custard

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease 4 large muffin pans. Combine flour and sugar in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre.
2. Using a fork, whisk butter, egg, milk, and bananas together in a jug. Add to flour mixture and fold together until just combined.
3. Spoon into prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer to serving plates.

* * *

As an aside, I would like to make a quick apology for the lack of updates. I was so excited when I moved my food blog, and then suddenly Real Life took over in a nasty way. Now that it's settled down somewhat, I'm back posting.

Other things I'm posting in the near future:

• Quick and Easy Chocolate Sauce
• ANZAC Biscuits
• Macaroni Cheese with bacon & mushrooms
• "Glick's Bakery" in Balaclava, Victoria
• "The Chokolait Hub" in Melbourne, Victoria

I can't wait to show you The Chokolait Hub! It's one of the best Chocolaterie's in Melbourne and it's simply delightful.

Upcoming Week

I'm putting together a couple of posts at the moment, but wanted to share with you some of the things that I've cooked this week, and want to share!















I made the most awesome Macaroni and Cheese (with bacon and mushroom) the other night - I was so pleased with it, and it was SOooooo good.

How good does that look!















Here it is as I served it, with green beans on the side. The smokiness of the bacon and earthiness of the mushrooms really worked with the creamy sauce that coated the pasta. I like topping my Mac'n'Cheese with breadcrumbs mixed with cheddar cheese.



Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Frosting. MMMMmmmmmm. The Best, Moistest Cupcake recipe EVER. They last for days (although who let's them last that long!!) in a container. I made a batch to take to my sister's house over the weekend, and these are from a batch I made a little while ago to take to a friends house for Afternoon Tea.

Also yesterday, I came across a Jewish bakery in the next suburb that does the BEST bagels EVER. SO GOOD. I'm thinking I have to go back there this afternoon to get more, because we ate the bag of bagels we brought home already! Maybe tomorrow morning...

Welcome to Blooming Good Food!

Welcome to Blooming Good Food! What's with the title, I hear you ask. Well, I'm an Aussie, and it's one way of saying something's great, or awesome, fantastic, insert any word along these lines :)

I love food, and I've really enjoyed sharing some recipes on my lifestyle blog A City Girl Goes Country, but I came to the realisation that my blog wasn't actually suppose to be a food blog. So I created a new one, specifically for food. And this is it. So, I'm going to import some of my other posts over here, and create a beautiful new space for sharing good food! The posts will be back-dated over the last month or so, so have a good look around :)

Basic Red Sauce

Originally posted: 25 may 2008:

I've got a couple of basic recipes to put up. I've been putting it off, because I realised the other day that this blog has outgrown what I originally meant for it. So I'm moving it, but I haven't fixed up the other page yet. So, procrastination is my name at the moment.

This is for my friend Star, who a few weeks ago, asked me if I had a good plain tomato sauce for pasta recipe. I usually just make a sauce up as I go, with a few basic things, so I tried out a few different things, and have decided that this batch was a good basic recipe. You can make this, and add other things to it to make quick different sauces. Bacon and chilli, for Spicy Bacon Pasta. Olives, capers, capsicum and a good italian sausage for a variation of Puttanesca. Add a whole batch to some browned mince, and you've got a basic bolognaise.

I learned sometimes the simplest sauce you could make, was cooking some crushed garlic, adding a good tomato sugo, fresh basil leaves and seasoning. And that is a good sauce. But other times, it's nice to have a bit of variation.



See? A plain tomato sauce :)

Cheese & Chive Scones

Originally posted: 10 May 2008:

Sundays mean scones to me. In my childhood, my Mum would often whip up a batch of fluffy scones for morning or afternoon tea on a Sunday, and they would be served hot, the batch wrapped up in a tea towel to stay that way, with whipped cream and jam. I learned how to make scones at my Mum's side, so it's been one of the recipes that I've always understood how it works, and how to put it together. I've never managed to have a flat, hard rock instead of a scone (instead of that one time that I put in plain flour and forgot the baking powder required to make it self-raising, but this is the last time that I shall mention this!). To me, a scone is made with flour & butter & milk, not flour and lemonade and something else. It puzzles me that there are recipes that include a fizzy liquid, however I can understand them. I've had family members that couldn't make a scone to save their life, and their results are hard enough to bounce off the floor and stay in one piece.

The feathery texture of scones are reliant on rubbing the butter in to the flour well, and not over-mixing or kneading the dough. However, it's not a disaster if you do - simply let the mixture sit for a while. Wrap it in plastic and pop it into the fridge, then let it come back to room temperature after 15 minutes or so. It's also a recipe that you perfect if you make it often enough. You wont need a recipe for them. My Mum doesn't need her recipe for them, and whilst my recipe is very water stained and flour covered, I now am almost at the stage of not needing the recipe either. And I am definitely AT the stage of knowing the mixture well enough - how it mixes, and comes together - to know how to add things. In fact, my excels-at-scone-making Mum now calls me for my Spinach & Cheese Scone recipe!

For a recent themed competition on another site, I produced these scones. The theme was cheese, and as soon as I saw it, I thought "Ooooh what an excuse to make cheesey scones!!" And they're so good. By themselves spread with butter than melts when they're still warm from the oven, or slightly toasted and eaten with soup the next day, you can't go past Cheese and Chive Scones!

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Originally posted: 29 April 2008:

I have a confession to make. I'm addicted to chocolate chip cookies. I have several recipes for them floating around. I've made them so often, I used to have one of the recipes stuck to the inside of my head. As it is, I've now formulated my own recipe, which could probably be found in a lot of cookbooks. A friend's husband loves my chocolate chip cookies, and managed to teach their 2 year old to ask me "Cookies 'izzy?"

They've got to be my foremost default cookie. I try and have the ingredients on hand at all times, and it's not that hard to do. Of course, looking in my cupboard and fridge right at the moment, before I've done shopping for the week, I've hardly got any of the ingredients! Chocolate chips? Nope. Butter? Zilch. Flour?? Get outta here. But I know it can be easily remedied.

Now that the weather has turned towards winter, and the days are colder, the nights longer, my cookie jar calls out to be filled! At the moment? It's got sultana & oat biscuits in it. These cookies are made from the same basic recipe that my chocolate chip ones come from. So, in regards to the recipe that I'm going to write up today, there are many variations, all depending on your own likes and dislikes.

But seriously - who couldn't love these cookies?



Beautiful, golden brown, crispy cookies. YUM. Eaten whilst still warm out of the oven, is sheer decadence.

Chicken Noodle Soup (with meatballs Mmmm)

Originally posted: 7 April 2008:

Greetings! I do apologise for the distinct gap in between this post at the last post I presented. Goodness, it's been a month! I've done a bit of traveling back to ye-olde-hometown (*waves to the new people*), seen some friends, and the most important thing is that I've been cooking up a storm! If I don't have more than 4 new recipes to share - well, you can dress me up in a tutu and call me Lola!!

No, seriously. Don't do that. I really do have at least four brand new recipes to share! Starting off with this one today, I'm sure you'll love them all!

Who doesn't love home made soup? Especially as we're (down here) heading into Autumn, and before you know it, we'll be smack into frosty nights, and wet drizzly days. Oh, hang on - we've already got those! (Boy, did we have a bluster of a storm last week! Why, an entire window blew out in the apartment block facing us, and wasn't that a huge noise! Just about had a heart attack.) This soup recipe I have adapted from that wonder of wonders, one of my favourite cooks, Nigella Lawson, and her book Feast. She cooks up a great Chicken Noodle Soup, which we just love. It's so quick and easy to make, and you can throw it together with things that you'll generally find in your fridge & freezer. What makes mine different from Nigella's, is that I've substituted a few yummy chicken meatballs, instead of just plain chicken breast!

Today, I'll give you Nigella's recipe, and then show you how I've adapted it to get to Chicken Meatball Noodle Soup!



See? Doesn't that look great? Come on in and have a looksee at the recipe :)

Gingernuts!

Originally posted: 7 March 2008:

I love finding new biscuit (and for you Americans, that'd be cookies, not breakfast biscuits) recipes. We've all got out favourites: chocolate chip, Anzacs, oatmeal & raisin. I have a great recipe by Bill Granger which is Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip. Just by substituting some of the butter in the recipe with peanut butter, it lends a lovely sweet nutty flavour to the biscuit. I also love the traditional Anzac biscuit, which is something that has so many different recipes, but all come from the same basic ingredients. Some have equal amounts of coconut, flour, sugar & oats, others have different amounts of each.

Quite often, I go searching for recipes to replace store-bought biscuits: Tim-Tams (that great Australian chocolate biscuit), Mint Slices, Granitas, Gingernuts, Arrowroot. (All Arnott biscuits available in Australia.) Today, I bring you Gingernuts!

This is SUCH an easy recipe, I couldn't get over it the first time I tried it. I seem to say that about all of the recipes that I've posted about, but again it's true! And again, it's an Egg-Free recipe!



Don't they look awesome? Crisp, light, wonderfully gingery, and great to have with a cup of tea or coffee, they're great every-day biscuits.

No-Time Bread from thekitchn.com

Originally posted: 25 February 2008:

I can't remember how I found this site - I think I was browsing through seriouseats.com one afternoon - but am I glad I did. Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn presented a different idea from The Bread of last year - the No-Knead Bread - with their idea of No-Time Bread. Instead of throwing everything in a pot and leaving it for 24 hours before cooking it, this bread only takes 1 hour before it's done. What? I hear you say. Bread from scratch in an hour? Not Possible! You're pulling our legs. No, No! I profess - I promise you here and now. Fantastic bread, with a great crumb and even better crust, in only ONE hour!



So, if you are craving that fresh bread feeling, but don't have the time to set your bread maker, or indeed want the bread today instead of tomorrow, then is this the recipe for you! Yes, you too can produce this sort of good-lookin' loaf this evening!

Chocolate & Raspberry Cupcake-Muffins

Originally posted: 23 February 2007:

There was a post of Chocolate Chip Muffins (available here) that I saw on a baking community I'm a part of, that I really wanted to try. But when I had the mixture sitting in the bowl, I thought it was missing something. So I trialled out a new recipe, on Valentines Day. It worked really well, so I made them again, and these are the photos from the second time around.

The recipe was adapted by the original poster from a recipe on allrecipes.com, and I further adapted it. For the purposes of this recipe, please note that the pictures and results that I post here are from a HALF batch of the mixture.

I find these are almost a cupcake in taste & texture, hence the name of Cupcake-Muffins.

Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

Originally posted: 11 February, 2008:

I was going through old magazines early last year, when I was sorting out stuff and packing up, and I found a magazine with 50 Chocolate Recipes. Just amazing. It was a collection from many different magazines, all collated. This recipe is from that magazine - sadly I can't remember the one it was. I give you:

Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding!

Passionfruit Melting Moments

Originally posted: 9 December, 2007:

So, here I am again, baking my little heart out on a Sunday. Today I made some shortbread to sent to the in-laws for Christmas, and some passionfruit melting moments. I also have a batch of Pioneer Woman's No-Knead bread rolls prooving on the stove, ready to go in the oven in a little bit. But it's all about the Passionfruit Melting Moments.

Cinnamon Rolls, by Pioneer Woman

Original post date: 29 November 2007:

I had a meeting approaching, with a small group of people that I know through a discussion board online. I thought I should go along with some baking. And since I had really wanted to give this recipe a go, I thought - why not! So, I give you:

Cinnamon Rolls - Recipe by the Pioneer Woman!