London Riot Banana Bread

In case you've been in a cave, London has been overwhelmed by riots for the last three days. Last night was definitely the worst of it and as a result constant sounds of sirens (some a bit too close for my comfort) kept me from sleeping well.

Today I woke up determined to help with the clean-up. I walked around my neighbourhood to nearby areas that I heard were affected, but they were already clean. I heard through Twitter that people were meeting at Hackney Town Hall, so I walked up there. It was already tidied and those of us on the clean-up crew ended up being more props in a photo opp than anything else. Then, I heard that they needed help in Clapham, so I hopped on a train and went down there. I waited with people for several hours for forensics to finish and apparently also for Boris Johnson to show up and have his little photo opp before we could begin. (As a side note we got heckle Boris, which was satisfying) I was able to help clean for about half an hour when I heard rumours that things were starting to be dodgy around my neighbourhood tube stop, so I decided I should head home. When I arrived I discovered that the rumours were in fact just rumours and that all was fine, although shops were closing early. However, as I walked down the street to my flat complex, I saw a police car enter the carpark. This disturbed me a bit until I discovered they were there because one of my neighbours had called the police on the neighbourhood kids who were playing in our carpark. They always do that.

I fell on the sofa, exhausted, had a think and decided that the day called for a bit of baking. Carolina, my housemate, had some bananas and suggested I make banana bread. I agreed. But alas, as I rummaged through the cupboards for ingredients, I discovered we didn't have a few items. Since the shops all around us closed early, I had to improvise. The result was quite yummy, so I've decided to post my recipe for what I'm calling "London Riot Banana Bread". You should know that the original recipe came from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and I have made some...ahem...notes of my modifications.

Ingredients:
-217g dark brown sugar
-53g caster sugar
(note: Original recipe calls for 270g light brown sugar, which I didn't have)
-2 eggs
(note: These were my last eggs)
-2 bananas peeled and mashed
(note: Original recipe calls for 200g, but who the hell weighs their bananas for this?)
-280g of plain flour
-slightly more than 1 teaspoon of baking powder
(note: I spilled some over the measuring spoon as I was chatting with Carolina)
-1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
-about 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
-slightly less than 1 teaspoon of ginger
(note: Yes, you guessed it. I didn't have enough ginger or cinnamon. This should have been 1 teaspoon each)
-140g light margarine
(note: The original recipe calls for unsalted butter, but I'm on a diet)
-95g white chocolate chips
(note: The original recipe doesn't call for white chocolate chips, but I had this 100g bag and needed to justify eating 5g of them)

Preheat the oven to 170C 325F or Gas Mark 4
(note: It's actually Gas 3 in the book, but my gas oven is weird so I go to 4)

Put the dark brown sugar in a bowl and use a mixer to smoosh them together so you can pretend you have light brown sugar. (Yes I made this part up)

Add the eggs to your fake light brown sugar and use a mixer to beat until well incorporated. Then beat in the mashed bananas.

Add the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ginger into the sugar and egg mixture. Stir it with a wooden spoon until all the dry ingredients have been incorporated (The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook uses the word "incorporated" a lot) into the sugar and egg mixture. Pour in the melted butter and beat until all ingredients are well mixed.

Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin (I prepared mine with low calorie sunflower oil spray. I'm on a diet, remember) and bake in the preheated oven for about an hour. Bread should be firm to the touch and toothpick inserted should come out clean. Leave this to cool slightly in the tin on a wire rack before turning out completely.

Eat, enjoy and be happy that tonight in London is nowhere near like it was last night, but spare a thought to those in Manchester and other areas where the unrest continues.

Bake Myself Thin...

I absolutely love to bake and very recently acquired The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I've made a few delicious cakes so far and there is ever so much more to be tried. But alas, I'm trying to lose some weight. Although I always give most of what I bake away, to be constantly creating treats to tempt me is not conducive to dropping a few pounds.

If you have been reading my blog for a while then you know about The Biggest Loser contest we did at work over a year ago. Being a loser made me a winner but then I proceeded to gain the weight back again. The competition with a fellow colleague was my impetus to stick with diet and exercise for three months but after the contest was over, I returned to my old ways and with those ways came the pounds I had lost.

So, I decided to create a new type of competition... with myself. I plan on using my love of baking to 'bake myself thin'. I created a system whereby I will earn points for good behaviour and lose points for bad behaviour. My reward will be the ability to make lovely treats to share and of course I will be able to sample the treats I bake.

Thus my plan. Only after earning 60 points will I be able to make something from the cookbook.

1. I will weigh in every Friday that I am at school and record my weight. A few other colleagues still do this since the BL contest and being part of it will help. (3 points each time I weigh in)

2. I will log everything I eat into Livestrong.com daily and stay within my calorie goal.
(1 point for logging in and recording, 3 points for logging in and staying within the goal)

3. I will exercise for at least 45 minutes- gym, cycle, running or something along those lines. I will also record this on Livestrong.com
(3 points for each time I exercise and record it)

4. The only thing I can buy from the school cafeteria is salad, soup, bread (roll) and fruit. (-5 if anything more)

5. With the exception of Friday Treats, I may not eat any sweets that are in the staff room. Healthy snacks are okay but must be logged.
(-5 points for every time I eat staff room sweets)

6. On a school night if I go out in the evening I can only have 1 drink.
(-3 points for every drink I have over one)

7. Finally, once I am able to bake something must record it with the calories and must give most of it away. No points of this- just a rule.

I will start tomorrow, keep this up until May and then decide if I should continue or not. I'm already planning on what I'll bake after earning my first 60 points. Yum! Of course I'll update on my progress at points here if you are interested.

And now I'm hungry and must eat something.

Citrus Glaze for Scones and Other Yummy Things

I tried my hand at making scones today. The recipe I used was okay, but frankly not worth mentioning. I'll probably search for another one. However, I decided they could do with a bit of a glaze, so I went seeking one out in cyber space. (It's interesting that I didn't just consult one of my 3 million cookbooks, but there you go.) Unfortunately I discovered as I read through a few recipes that I was missing ingredients here and there, so using what I had seen and what I had available in my kitchen, I made one up. And....

It's REALLY yummy. As I said, the scones themselves are just okay, but after eating 4 of them (oink oink), I've decided that it is definitely my improvised orange glaze that made them yummy. So, here you go...

3/4 C (98g or 175ml) confectioners sugar
1 tsp (5ml) orange peel zest
1 tsp (5ml) of vanilla
3 tsp (15ml) milk

Whisk all the ingredients together and drizzle on scones. Wait 10 minutes and eat.

I'm hoping this year brings me more yummy improvisations to share.

Eggless Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Butter Cream Frosting Yum!

My friend, Kellie, celebrated her birthday last Saturday and the poor woman is allergic to eggs.

I found this recipe for eggless chocolate cake on allrecipes.com. It's nummy.

Ingridents:
• 560 g sifted all-purpose flour
• 600 g white sugar
• 85 g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 235 ml vegetable oil
• 710 ml water
• 15 g baking soda
• 3 g salt
• 45 ml vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C), grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, soda and salt. Add sugar and mix together.
3. Add oil, water and vanilla and mix thoroughly.
4. Pour into a 9x13 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.

Thank you Allrecipes.com!

Then I did another search for raspberry frosting and found this recipe on a blog called Cupcake Frenzy. Sadly this blog hasn't been updated since November 2006, but there's loads of good stuff up there.

Raspberry Buttercream Frosting

150g butter, softened
2-3 cups icing sugar
frozen raspberries, quantity depends on how much of a raspberry taste/colour you're after
1/3 cup milk

1. Cream the butter. Add the icing sugar and raspberries and beat well. If you find you need more liquid in the frosting, add milk gradually.
2. Frost away!

Now this frosting recipe is not exact (it even says so on the blog). I suggest that you cream the butter and sugar well first and then add the strawberries. I'm not certain that the milk is wholly necessary.

So, I frosted the cake and added fresh raspberries to the top, circled the raspberries with white frosting as I thought it would look cute, put candles on the top and realised much to my horror that the colours were very Arsenal FC. I may support Arsenal but my Kellie is a Chelsea supporter. She did make a joking comment about the colours of the cake but absolutely loved it. In fact, everybody loved it. There wasn't a crumb left by the end of the night.

Here's a pic of the cake pre candles:


Here's the cake on fire:

If you have a friend whose allergic to eggs, make certain they get a birthday cake when their day rolls around.

Grrrrr.....

I'm frustrated.

I have this recipe for brownies. I'm quite renowned for them, so I thought I would try something new. Being a fan of cream cheese brownies I thought that if I just looked at a recipe or two and did some experimenting, I'd have a delectably delicious dessert. (I love alliteration) I found a recipe that looked like it would work in theory with a few alterations, so I gave it a go.

I made my first batch of cream cheese brownies for the chilli cook-off at Mark's house. The middle ones were really gooey, but everyone still said they loved them as they licked the goo off their fingers. I would accuse them of just being polite, but every last brownie was eaten and Gillian said she thought it was my best batch yet. Recently I tried again and got the same result. The middle ones were really gooey-too gooey in my opinion, but again people said they were quite good. And, once the squish ones were frozen they were really quite nummy. I would like to make a batch, however, that comes out of the oven and is perfect after cooling. The goo may taste good, but I want a cream cheese brownie you can hold in your hand at a picnic.

This morning the Reads texted to say they were having a bbq. I asked Kim if I could bring anything and she suggested dessert. Thus, I went for a third try.

I changed the recipe a bit more and left my brownies in the oven about 7 more minutes longer than usual. While that seemed to help, they were still gooey in the middle. I took the gooey ones and put them in the freezer. The rest are going to the Reads' bbq.

I'm obsessed. I will figure this out.

Cookie Concoction

I told my homeroom I would make them cookies because I was so proud of the amount of toys they donated for the toy drive and the fact that everyone wore red or a poppy on the day our school acknowledged Remembrance Day. In truth each homeroom gets spirit points for activities like these, and at the end of the year the homeroom with the highest amount of spirit points in each grade level gets a pizza party. I love pizza. We have won the pizza party for the last two years. Being quite competitive, I will do almost anything to motivate my students to win. I pulled out the ingredients I thought I would need. Fortunately I had purchased chocolate chips earlier in the day, but I discovered that I was out of vanilla, and at this point the shops had all shut. I called my friend Patricia for other reasons and in the course of our conversation I asked her what would be a good vanilla substitute. She suggested orange juice. All I had was apple. She said that would probably work, and I pulled down my recipe books in search of a good chocolate chip cookie bar recipe.

Shit! I needed brown sugar as well and had none. I looked up substitutions for brown sugar and discovered that adding molasses to white sugar was acceptable. That would be great if I had molasses. I didn't. I got on-line and began to search for other recipes and found one which did not require brown sugar. Woo Hoo! I started to combine the ingredients and discovered another roadblock. The recipe called for honey, and I had none.

I called my downstairs neighbour, Catherine. She had honey. Hooray! I borrowed her honey and continued with my creation. The cookies called for 1 and 1/4 cup of butter. The only measuring cup I have is large Pyrex one. It is my faithful measuring cup. I've had it for years and would be devastated by its loss. However, when it comes to measuring 1 and 1/4 cups out of a large tub of margarine (yes another substitution), it doesn't do so well. Remembering that 8 ounces equals a cup, I decided to weigh it. It seemed like a bit too much margarine, but I used it anyway. After assembling all the ingredients I realised that my initial thought about the butter was probably correct. I added a bit more flour and pinch more baking powder and the consistency seemed ok. Then, I grabbed the packets of chocolate chips.

I realised then that I had made yet another error. Instead of purchasing 2 packets of plain chocolate chips (2 packets of plain chocolate chips here=1 16 oz bag of semi-sweet packet of chocolate chips in the US), I had 1 packet of plain and 1 packet of milk chocolate chips. Oh well, with the way this was going would it really matter? I added the chips, spread the dough across a pan, and then placed it in the oven. Right then my phone rang. It was my mother.

I told her the story of this concoction and of course she laughed and said something like, 'Most people look at the recipe and then go to the store, Heather. They don't make it up as they go along.' I agreed with her, but I was excited to see the result of this. As we chatted the cookie bars baked away. At one point I glanced at the recipe and realised that I hadn't added salt. I laughed and my mother suggested that I tell my students that they are 'salt-free' cookies for their health. 'Sure,' I said, 'because you know eleven year-old children need to worry about hypertension.'

Finally, the cookie bars were done. I pulled them from the oven and they were a but fluffy, but looked fine. Actually, they tasted pretty good, but they could probably use a little salt.