A resurrection of sorts (& a banana bread recipe)

Hello again.

It's been a while. More than a while. I won't bore you with reasons and excuses, but I'm back. I'm resurrecting the blog as part of my new commitment to writing that isn't thesis related because I need a ~creative outlet~. So, I'll be posting bits and pieces here on the ol' blog every so often.

For now, I'll share with you my banana bread recipe which has been serving me well for the last few years. I have no idea where I got the original recipe from, but I scrawled it onto a bit of old newspaper which has been gracing the door of our freezer ever since. I make changes to it almost every time I make it though.

The ingredients list varies depending on what I have and what I feel like doing, but here are the basics:

• 1½ cups self raising flour
• ½ cup of plain wholemeal flour
• ½ cup of packed brown sugar (or less/none if you want to add honey or maple syrup or stevia or something like that)
• 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon (I honestly don't think I've ever actually measured how much I use)
• 50g of butter, melted (or ¼ cup of some kind of oil or maybe yoghurt if you want)
• ½ cup of milk (I generally use soy milk, but I'm sure any kind would be fine)
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed ( I just squish them in my hands as I add them, it's very therapeutic)
• 2 eggs (or 2 eggs worth of an egg substitute or an extra mashed banana works great too)
• ½ cup of optional extras (my favourite is chopped dates, but go nuts with whatever you want – muesli, sultanas, chocolate chips, dried figs, hazelnuts, All-Bran – seriously, whatever you want)

Preheat your oven to 180°C and grease a loaf pan. Mix all your dry ingredients (except any optional extras, mix them in last) together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add all your wet ingredients. Give it a good mix with a spatula (or a wooden spoon or a fork, it doesn't matter). Now mix in your extras. Tip it all into your loaf pan. If you feel like it, you can top the mix with stuff (a sprinkle of cinnamon, some oats, a drizzle of honey or a bit of brown sugar all work pretty well). Bake it for 45-50 minutes until the top is nice and golden.

I feel like in a world where people are in their home kitchens obsessing over choux pastry and macarons, we need a recipe like this. I can't think of a time it's ever turned out bad. There was once when I made the mix a bit too wet and undercooked it ever so slightly, but I just put slices of it in the sandwich press before I ate them and it was all good. It's a very "she'll be right, darl" kind of recipe and that's what I love about it.

Breakfast of Champions

I've been having trouble opening my mouth properly for a while now. Recently it got quite a bit worse and I was diagnosed with temporomandibular joint disorder. I'm seeing a physiotherapist once a week and hopefully in a few months my jaw will be at a point where surgery is feasible, but in the meantime eating well and eating enough has become a bit of a problem.

Photo of a muffin on a plate with a little paper flag reading "Good Morning."

So, in a quest to come up with something breakfasty that's easy for me to eat I invented these awesome muffins. Well, ok, I changed an existing recipe. But I changed it a fair bit!

Photo of the muffin broken in half.

Amie's Breakfast Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

• 1 3/4 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
• 1 cup natural yoghurt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup rice bran oil
• 2 large bananas, mashed
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup protein powder (optional)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 1/4 cups muesli with dried fruit

Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine yoghurt, egg, oil and banana in a large mixing bowl. Gradually stir in remaining ingredients until just combined. Spoon into greased muffin tray/s and bake for 20-25 minutes. Let stand in the trays for 5 minutes before turning the muffins out onto a cooling rack.

The muffins are quite dense and moist and I decided not to make them super sweet. Matt likes them a little sweeter and says they're really good warmed up with a little butter and honey.

Photo of the plate with just crumbs and the paper flag remaining.