muffins for preschool

When our boy is eating them, I make muffins for his snack at preschool. And my husband loves them as well, so if I bake them right before I leave for Pilates, chances are the dozen I baked will be significantly reduced by the time I get home. A friend asked for the recipe last week and doesn’t have a kitchen scale so when I made them the other night I weighed the ingredients into the measuring cup before putting them into the bowl.

Apple Banana Muffins (based on Nigella’s recipe from Nigella Express)
½ c plus 1 tsp vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 c applesauce, unsweetened (or pear sauce)
1 banana
1 ¾ c flour (250 g)
1/2 c firmly packed brown sugar (80 g)
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
½ c chocolate chips – optional (80g)

Preheat the oven to 400 deg F. Mix the oil and eggs together and set aside. Mash the banana in a small bowl and mix in the applesauce. In a mixing bowl add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix. Add the oil/egg mixture and the fruit and stir until just combined. Add in the chocolate chips, if using. Spoon the batter into 12 regular sized greased (or lined with muffin papers) muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes until the tops spring back when pressed.

There are numerous variations for this recipe. The original recipe calls for 3 bananas instead of the 1c applesauce and 1 banana. Any pureed fruit can substitute for the applesauce but if it is sweetened you may want to cut back on the sugar a bit. I have used 1 c of pumpkin (or roasted squash or grated zucchini) for the applesauce and ½ c of applesauce for the fruit and added in ½ tsp of cinnamon and ¼ tsp of nutmeg and used raisins instead of chocolate chips. And toffee or white chocolate chips can be used instead of chocolate chips.

baking bread

So Tuesday night, in between making quinoa pilaf and cabbage gratin I made a loaf of oatmeal spelt bread (above, pictured in the background) using the base white bread recipe from America's Test Kitchen Home Collection. I mix it up using my stand mixer (love it) and let the dough rise in the bowl as suggested by a friend. I love this idea as you can punch the dough down using the dough hook and you don't end up with another bowl to wash! Admittedly my loaves aren't pretty but they are tasty.

I also whipped up a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip toffee muffins. Then I collapsed and haven't cooked or baked since. Just kidding!

Also in the picture are bluebells and lily-of-the-valley from my sister-in-law for mother's day. Isn't she lovely! I love lily-of-the-valley. They remind my of my mum, who loved them. When we lived in Germany, Dad used to gather them for her and bring them home in his hat. Probably not the proper use of a uniform hat (Dad was a Flight Lieutenant in the Air Force).

cabbage and salad

Yesterday T announced that he wanted to build lego submarines just like in the book. The book in question was a photo album with pictures of lego submarines that my nephew F made a few years ago when D and I were visiting. (D as I recall, was irritated by F's models not being accurate and consequently unsailable. D, you see, is very into military history and is picky about accuracy and detail. I told him to get over it as these were lego submarines and F was only 8 at the time.)


So D and T looked up pictures of submarines in D's military books so T could see what they looked like and while I whipped up a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins, they made submarines.



The top one is D's model and the bottom one is T's. T's has the propeller in the front and comes equipped with bedrooms and bathrooms and a dining table. The crew eat cabbage and salad for dinner. When we asked T if he would eat cabbage and salad he said no. But he would eat the chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Unless he couldn't eat the cookies until he ate his dinner, in which case he would eat cabbage and salad. That is news to us! Apparently he's not ready for a submariner's life yet, he still is only eating cucumber and carrots - no cabbage or salad yet!