Weekend eats - Alex's banana muffin recipe

Here's the thing about me - I'm a terrible baker. It's just not my thing. So I'm afraid I'm not the mum who's always got a fresh cake in the tin ready to go. If that's even a thing any more. So it was with great excitement that our bare cake tin became filled this last weekend when Alex did some baking. He made a batch of banana oat muffins which were a) delicious, b) blimmin filling, and c) very easy to make, so I've been assured. One of these muffins was enough to fill each of us up until lunch for a busy morning, and they're made with lots of good stuff like oats, banana, and walnuts, so I'm sharing the recipe here as it's a real winner.

Here's what you need:
Dry ingredients
2 cups plain flour
1 cup porridge oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup (if you don't have any, you can use another 1/2 cup of brown sugar instead)
A handful of walnuts, roughly chopped (or any other nuts you fancy. Or indeed, no nuts either, if you're not a nut fan)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
Wet ingredients
1 1/2 cups mashed banana (which is roughly 3 bananas)
2 eggs (medium or whatever you have)
1/3 cup melted butter or margarine, unsalted
1 tsp vanilla essence or extract (not sure what the difference is. You can see why I'm not a baker!)

And here's what you need to do:
1. Pre-heat the oven to about 180ºC / 375ºF (we set ours to 200 because it's a bit rubbish and always slightly cooler than we need it to be)
2. Put all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix well
3. Put all the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl and mix well
4. Add the contents of the wet bowl to the big dry bowl and fold together gently
5. Spoon the mixture into muffin cases - it should make about 12 - and sprinkle some extra chopped walnuts on top for texture
6. Bake for 15-18 mins - start watching from about 12 mins. You're looking for nicely risen, golden muffins that aren't sticky in the middle when you pop a sharp knife in to check
7. Cool for as long as you can wait for, while the lovely smell wafts round the house, and then wolf one down.

They are particularly good for brekkie with coffee - we packed ours up with a thermos and headed to the beach to have ours. Enjoy!

Mother's Day recipe: cheesy smoked salmon tart

I celebrated Mother's Day yesterday by cooking my lovely mum some lovely lunch, and I ended up taking some quick snaps on my phone as I went, so I thought I'd do a little recipe post to remember it by. I've never done a recipe post before, but because this was all my own creation (essentially made up as I went along - this may become more apparent as you read on) I thought I'd share.

I made a big cheesy smoked salmon tart - it was so easy and really yummy. This would make an egg-cellent Easter family lunch too - it had bonus points for being something you could cook beforehand and have ready and waiting to go, plus Arlo loved it just as much as us so we didn't have to faff around with separate toddler dishes (although he steadfastly refused to eat anything green with it. Sigh.)

What you'll need:

• A roll of ready-made shortcrust pastry
• Smoked salmon (the pack I used was 120g, which was about right for us. You could adjust that up or down depending on how fishy you'd like your tart)
• Five large free range eggs
• Cheese of your choice - I used grated cheddar. I had fancied using something a bit softer like ricotta, but Alex vetoed that while we were shopping, so cheddar it was! 
• A decent splash of double cream - I sloshed in about a third of a 300ml tub
• Salt, pepper and herbs of your choice (I used some dried basil, but wish I'd had some dill)
• A sense of adventure

And here's what you do:

• Stage One: get your pastry ready. Unfurl your pastry on the counter. Grease your tart dish and pop a piece of greaseproof paper on the bottom. Lay the pastry over the dish, and press it into all the edges so it's nice and snug all the way around. Cut off the edges round the top with a knife, and use a fork to prick little holes in the bottom (I found this bit strangely satisfying)

• Stage Two: blind bake your pastry. Put a sheet of greaseproof paper on top of your pastry, and put something on top to weigh it down while it bakes. A seasoned baker may well have special baking beans in the cupboard to do this very job. I used the dregs of a pack of pearl barley that'd been knocking about in the cupboard since 2011. Now, we don't have a fan oven, just an electric one that I suspect doesn't get quite as hot as it says it does. I baked the pastry for 12 mins on 200c, but lucky people with fan ovens may want to adjust the heat setting down a bit.

• Stage Three: put some fillings in. In a separate bowl with a picture of a small horse on it, I whisked up the eggs, cream and seasoning with a fork. Then I assembled the rest of the fillings into the pastry case - about half the cheese on the bottom, then the smoked salmon, ripped into bite-size chunks and laid in little folds and curls, then the rest of the cheese on top. Then just pour the creamy egg mixture all over the top, making sure it goes right to all the edges. Final touch is a sprinkle of herbs on top. If I was doing this again and suddenly became a much more organised person at the same time, I'd throw in some fresh dill. Then I cooked the whole lot at 200c again for 25mins. Nb. I rotated it halfway through cooking to make sure we had even 'brown-ness', because our oven really isn't the best.

• Stage Four: wolf it down. We had some salad and asparagus to go with. Polished off by three generations in less time that it took to bake!