Tag Archives: Breakfast Club

May 10, 2013

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins

We’ve just had a couple of days of bank jolidays here in France and it rained. It’s pretty much expected and part of the course of bank holidays in the UK, with the amazing exception of this last weekend obviously, but not so normal here!. So rain meant a spot of indoor baking with the littlies which we haven’t managed for quite a while now with all the flitting around I’ve been doing lately. And with a couple of prosperous rhubarb plants in the garden and the Swallow Recipes for Life challenge to mind we made some tasty and fairly wholesome Rhubarb Crumble Muffins together.

Tucking into their muffins, in a short break from the bank holiday rain!

I’m actually staying at my friend Debbie’s house this week with the littlies, on the premise of doggie and horsey sitting. To be honest it’s been a welcome wee joliday for us all, wonderful to spend some quality and relaxed time with the kids after my recent three trips to the UK without them. And they’ve been the most chilled I’ve known them in recent times. Not that anyone would exactly call either of my kids ‘chilled’, but they have indeed been a good deal calmer than normal!. And for me, I’ve enjoyed getting my blogging and cooking mojo back, hence a spree of planned blogs I have for you in store.

The Lovely Dexter

These surprisingly healthy muffins are very low in sugar (and dark soft brown sugar at that) and fat (sunflower oil, apart from a little butter in the crumble topping). To increase the health stakes you could always omit the crumble topping and switch the plain flour for wholemeal (which I was intending to do but had run out!). Or you could un-health and sweeten with a little additional sugar if you wish!.

Just incase you missed my earlier posts the Somerset based charity SWALLOW, through the lovely Vanesther of Bangers and Mash Chat, are running a six month Recipes for Life challenge. Each month three ingredients are picked and bloggers are challenged to come up with easy, tasty and wholesome dishes using them. And for May the ingredients happen to be Rhubarb, Lemon and Spice. How lovely!

Seeing as Rhubarb’s well and truly in season I’m entering my blog to this month’s Simple and in Season, hosted by Ren Behan herself. Just in case you hadn’t seen, this month there’s a chance of winning the gorgeous and new Yeo Valley Great British Farmhouse Cookbook! So go enter….

And finally as they happen to make a pretty tasty, and healthy, breakfast munch (we’ve eaten them for breakie a couple of times now!) to Fuss Free Flavour’s Breakfast Club event. Hosted this month by Katie of Feeding Boys and a Firefighter and the theme so happening to be Bakes.

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins

Great for Baking with Kids, Rhubarb Lovers and/or Growers, Toddlers, Kids, Growns Ups, Picnics, Breakfasts, Elevensies, Packed Lunches, Afternoon Tea, After-school Munchies

Makes 12

For the Crumble Topping:

60g of Plain Flour

60g of Butter

50g of Dark Soft Brown Sugar

40g of Oats

a heaped teaspoon of Cinnamon

For the Muffin Mix:

250g of Plain Flour

a heaped teaspoon of Baking Powder

a heaped teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda

½ a teaspoon of Cinnamon

½ a teaspoon of Ground Ginger

a large free range Egg

150ml of natural Yogurt

3 tablespoons of Sunflower Oil

zest of a Lemon

250g of Rhubarb, washed

175g of Dark Soft Brown Sugar

Special Equipment: A 12 hole muffin tin, muffin cases

Pre-heat your oven to 200°C. Line a muffin tin with 12 muffin cases.

Start with making the crumble topping. Place all the crumble ingredients together and rub the butter into the flour, cinnamon, oats and sugar. Set aside.

Sift all the dry muffin ingredients together into a large bowl, namely the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and ginger. Set aside. In another bowl, lightly whisk the egg then stir in the yogurt, oil and lemon zest.

Slice each strip of rhubarb lengthways into 2 or 3 strips depending on width. Then dice across. Place the diced rhubarb in a bowl with the sugar and stir. Set aside.

Combine the egg and yogurt mix with the sugared rhubarb and pour into the flour mix and combine well.

Spoon about a tablespoon of the muffin mix into each muffin case. Then spoon a layer of the crumble mix on the top and lightly press down.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 to 25 minutes until well risen, golden and a cake skewer comes out clean.

You might also like:

Super-Fruity Banana Mini-Muffins

Leftover Cheese & Onion Bread

28 Comments | tags: Breakfast, Breakfast Club, Cinnamon, Crumble, Ginger, Lemon Zest, Muffins, Recipes for Life, Rhubarb, Simple and in Season, Yogurt | posted in Baking with Kids, Bigger Kids, Cakes & Biscuits, Finger Foods, Toddlers & Pre-schoolers

March 29, 2013

Banana Pancakes!

By Eat Your Veg

I know, I know, I know I’m more than a little fashionably late for Pancake Day….but I had very much intended to write this blog quite some time ago!. Pancakes are big business in our house and barely a day goes by without a pancake request (breakfast, lunch or dinner!). But seeing as these days the monsters will only eat them with a gargantuan spreading of the not-so-healthy but so well-known Hazelnut and Choccie Spread, I’m loath to make them often. So I’ve been experimenting with healthier options and these Banana Pancakes have happily been gobbled down with great success minus any need for the naughty stuff. I’m certain they’d taste sublime with a decadent spreading but I’m not going there, these pancakes are served with fruit and fruit only at Chez Foti, plus a wee drizzle of honey or maple syrup and a dollop of creme fraiche naturally. Happy days.

Anyone who’s ever travelled any the more popular backpacker routes of Asia or Latin America should be familiar with the ubiquitous Banana Pancake. They seem to crop up on pretty much every hostel or backpacker cafe breakfast menu, and I must have tirelessly munched my way through an inordinate amount in the totality of my two and a half years of traveling. Making them myself has wonderfully taken me back to those heady days, albeit life is rather more different now than then!

I may be late for pancake day, but I’m hopefully not too late to enter my pancake recipe to this month’s No Waste Food Challenge, an event held by Kate from Turquoise Lemons and this month hosted by Elizabeth’s Kitchen and the no waste ingredient being eggs!. Now we’ve always got eggs to use up from our hens and pancakes are the perfect answer in my book. Plus these pancakes are a great way of using up blackened and over-ripe bananas too. Since our eggs are so local (the hen house being approximately ten meters away from the kitchen door) I’m also entering my pancakes to this month’s Breakfast Club which has the theme of ‘local’. The challenge is the baby of Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and is being hosted this month by Heidi at Kitchen Talk.

Banana Pancakes

Great as a Finger Food for very little littlies, Toddlers & Young Children, Bigger Kids, Family Breakfasts, Sleepovers (I’m too scared to go there yet!), Grown Ups

Enough for a Family of Four:

20g of Butter, plus a little extra for greasing the pan

175g of Self-Raising Flour

½ a teaspoon of Baking Powder

a tablespoon of Soft Light Brown Sugar

2 free range Eggs

170ml of Full Fat Milk

2 Bananas, preferably very ripe, mashed with the back of fork

To Serve: Creme Fraiche or Yogurt, Honey or Maple Syrup, Berries or other Fruits

Melt the butter and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

Place the flour, baking powder and sugar in a mixing bowl and mix together.

In another bowl or jug lightly whisk the eggs, then whisk in the milk and cooled butter.

Whisk the wet mixture slowly into the dry mixture and when you have an even consistency stir or whisk in the mashed bananas.

Heat a frying pan until hot. Grease with a little butter and gently drop in a tablespoon of the batter at a time. You should be able to cook three to four at once, depending on the size of your pan. Allow plenty of room between each pancake as they do spread a little. Once each pancake is a little risen and you can see bubbles appear on the surface carefully turn over with a spatula and cook the other side. Each side should be pale golden-brown.

Either serve immediately or keep warm in a low oven until you’re ready.

Perfect served with a drizzle of maple syrup or honey, a (generous) dollop of creme fraiche or yogurt and fresh berries or fruit of your choice. Absolutely no Nutella required.

Master J sabotaging my photo!

18 Comments | tags: Banana, Breakfast, Breakfast Club, Eggs, No Waste Food Challenge, Pancakes | posted in Bigger Kids, Finger Foods, The Chickens, Toddlers & Pre-schoolers

December 8, 2012

White Chocolate and Cranberry Christmas Cookies

By Eat Your Veg

I’ve had a bit of a spate of cookie baking lately. Due in the main to my new cooker and in keeping my promise to Mr F that it would feed him with a regular supply of biscuity goodies. He is rather fond of his biscuits to say the least, and gets very grumpy if there happen to be less than two spare packets in the cupboard (the number of which he can easily polish off in a single tea dunking session). And cookies I find are the perfect almost instantaneous biscuit hit. The dough’s frighteningly easy and quick to make and can handily be made in advance and stored for several days in the fridge or considerably longer in the freezer. Then simply brought out when the urge for a cookie takes over or guests arrive, cut up (even straight from the freezer) and placed on a baking tray. And voila 9 minutes later you have the most perfectly naughty fresh cookies to munch. Or in my case one very happy husband.

Three sausage rolls of Cookie Dough, ready to be cut and baked

And so here’s my recipe for Christmas Cookies with White Chocolate Chunks and Dried Cranberries. This makes enough for about 30 large cookies, but I split the dough into thirds and only bake one lot at a time. Which will be particularly handy for sudden guests over the festive period. I’m planning on stockpiling quite a bit of cookie dough over the next couple of weeks!

I’m entering my recipe to a couple of bloggie events that are running this month. Firstly for my first ever time to the Breakfast Club challenge created by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours to encourage more interesting breakfasts. This month it’s being hosted by Vanesther at Bangers and Mash Chat and has the theme of ‘Brunch’. And as it’s Christmas my cookies make a wickedly good brunch snack with a cup or two of coffee (I can vouch for this).

Christmas TTT I’m also entering this month’s Tea Time Treats, an event held jointly by What Kate Baked and Lavender and Lovage. The theme this month is Chocolate and these cookies so happen to be equally good with a cuppa at the end of the day (which I can also vouch for!).

White Chocolate & Cranberry Christmas Cookies

Makes 30 large cookies:

225g of butter, very soft

175g of light muscovado sugar

175g of caster sugar

2 medium free range eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

350g of plain flour

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon of salt

200g of white chocolate, chopped into small chunks

150g of dried cranberries

Simply beat the butter until very soft (which is much easier to do if it’s been left to warm up out of the fridge for a while). Then beat in the sugars, then the eggs and the vanilla extract. Beat until smooth and creamy. Employ any spare children to do this bit for you!

In another bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Slowly add the dry mix to the wet until fully combined. Stir in the chocolate and cranberries. That really is all there is to it!.

Divide the mixture into three. Dollop each third onto a length of cling film. Using the cling film to hold the mixture together (it’s very soft and almost unworkable with bare hands) form into a long sausage shape, about 20 cm long and 5 cm wide. Twirl the ends of the cling film to secure into shape and pop into the fridge to firm up. Repeat with the other two thirds.

It’s good to use after about 30 minutes of firming up time. The dough will keep like this for several days in the fridge or much longer in a freezer.

When ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 190º/Gas 5. When it’s up to temperature, remove a section of dough from the fridge or freezer. Cut the sausage dough into 1.5 cm rounds, and simply place the rounds as they are, but very spread out, on a large baking sheet. They’ll melt down into a flat cookie shape all by themselves, my kids love to watch this.

Pop in the oven for 9 to 11 minutes. They’re ready when almost firm in the middle and a little brown. Remove from the tray immediately and cool a little on a rack before eating.

White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies