dried fruit

Sticky toffee banana muffins with cheesecake frosting

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

I see Bert’s inherited my thighs.

These are so delicious, I might have two.

As with sticky toffee pudding, the dates and dark sugar combine to create a dark toffee gooeyness. The icing is only just sweet, so it’s not sickly at all – New York cheesecake in icing form.

Makes 12 muffins

3 ripe bananas, mashed

175 muscavado (dark brown) sugar

175ml sunflower oil

100g chopped dates

175g brown self-raising flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

3 eggs, lightly beaten

For the frosting (to top half the cakes – double the quantities to top them all):

150g soft cheese

100g sieved golden icing sugar

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4/ 180 degrees. Gently stir all of the cake ingredients together until only just combined (this and the sunflower oil make them really light) then spoon the mixture into 12 muffin cases. Bake them for about 25 minutes. Allow to cool slightly in the tin then lift them onto a cooling rack to completely cool. I froze half the cakes at this point.

Beat the sugar and cheese together till combined then top the cooled cakes with it.

You can switch the banana for grated carrot and the chopped dates for raisins to make little carrot cakes.

Fruit and seed flapjack

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

flapjack

Makes 10-12

125g butter

125g brown sugar

125g honey

250g rolled oats

100g dried fruit – we had raisins and dates

30g mixed seeds

Melt the sugar, butter and honey together. Stir the dry ingredients together wildly so that the mixture is catapulted across the table, carpet and chairs. Add the melted ingredients and combine, flicking globules of warm mixture across the room and cackling madly. Press into a 20 x 25cm or so tin, bashing one small area like a drum until it is extremely flat but ignoring the rest. Cook at 180 degrees or on the grid shelf on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven with the cold shelf two shelves above, for 20-25 minutes. Put the bowl on your head and lick it from the inside. Dance on a chair while your mother tries to sweep the flapjack mixture up around you.

Cut into pieces in the tin while still warm.