Daffodil

Banana Bread

I only discovered banana bread as a first year student, so a good few years into my life in the UK and I really liked it. At the time I had no interest in baking and had no kitchen, so I used to buy it in one of the local shops. The moment I acquired a kitchen (and very little interest in baking) they stopped selling it and I have to admit - I forgot about banana bread. It wasn't until quite recently when my mum made some at home that I was reminded of it.
A big bunch of bananas came in the veg-box a week ago and they were all green and needed time to be edible. They were strange bananas though because they went from being green to being overripe without the transition stage in between. So I decided to make them into banana bread and see whether my own tastes anything like the one I used to buy a few years ago.

Banana bread

4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups of flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
110 g butter (room temperature)
1/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tsp lemon freshly squeezed juice

How to make it?
Preheat the oven to 180 C and grease a bread tin (mine is 20 cm x 11 cm).
Mash the bananas with a fork - you don't need to do it perfectly if some lumps of banana are left they will still be yummy in the bread.
Sift the flour, soda and salt into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl cream the butter with sugar until it's fluffy. Stir in the milk, eggs, bananas and vanilla extract. Add lemon juice to the banana mixture and mix all of the liquid ingredients well. Then fold them into the flour. Pour into the baking tin and bake for about 40-45 minutes until the bread is well-risen and golden-brown.
Cool before serving. Voilà, banana bread ready to be eaten.

(I used a BBC Food recipe which is slightly different and calls for an hour of baking - my bread was ready way before that, so I suggest checking it occasionally as it will depend on the oven and the size of your baking tin, I think)

Spring (is almost here)

Apple Pie

We have been getting a lot of apples in our veg-box recently and not all of them were very nice. And as they not-so-nice ones kept coming in bags and piling up I panicked about the potential of them going mouldy before I get a chance to do something with them. I'm not really a fan of processed fruit - jams don't really impress me and I rarely get excited about fruit cakes. I do however really like apples with cinnamon in all possible combinations - from cocktails, through mulled cider to apple pie. So, I made my very first apple pie. It doesn't look anywhere nearly as nice as the ones you see in cook books but I am told that it tasted good. For a first pie that review suits me fine. I shall work on the looks with my next one, when apples pile up again.

Apple Pie (based on WhitePlate's recipe)

2 rolls of shortcrust pastry

1,5 kg (or more) of apples (I used a mix of various types)

2 Tbs of ground cinnamon, ginger and cloves (or to taste)

50 g of butter

sugar to taste (I don't like anything too sweet, so I used about 2 tablespoons of demerara)

a bit of milk

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Roll out the pastry and fill your baking tin with it. Leave about 2 cm of the pastry hanging of the edges. Don't forget to grease the tin if you're not using baking paper. I've only just discovered baking paper and already can't imagine my life without it. Pierce the pastry with a fork in a few places and put it in the oven for about 15 minutes. 

In the meantime slice the apples. Melt butter in a pan and add your spices and fry them with the butter for a couple of minutes. Then add the apples and cook them for about 5-7 minutes stirring occasionally. Add sugar to taste and cover the pan with a lid. Cook until the apples soften a bit and then cool the stew. I put my pan in a sink full of cold water and stirred them lots, as I didn't have that much time but you can easily just let them sit around until they reach room temperature. 

Put your apple stew into the baking tin. Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the stew with it. Stick the edges to the already baked edges of the pastry, so that it forms a crusty top when it's baked. Pierce the pastry a few times. Next take a brush and some milk and brush the pastry with it to give it a glaze. You can also mix an egg yolk with some cream to get an even better effect.

Reduce the heat in your oven to 175 degrees and bake the pie for about 35 minutes until the top is golden.

Serve cold with a bit of cream. Or warm it up and serve with some ice-cream. 

A glass of wine

A glass of wine I enjoyed on a sunny evening last summer in Salcombe.