Banana Breakfast Ring

This is the recipe I cook most from 'Feast' - it's so quick and easy to make, and is great for using up over-ripe bananas. It's also light and fluffy and has a slight lemony tang. I have to say I've never eaten it for breakfast though!

In a large bowl mash up bananas well, then add oil, eggs, lemon juice and zest, vanilla and caster sugar. Whisk them all together with a fork.

Add flour and raising agents (or self-raising flour which is what I've started using) and fold to combine.

You end up with a lumpy mixture - very muffin-like, which is probably exactly what it is. A big muffin.

Pour it into an oiled bundt tin, or normal round cake tin. Cook for 30-40 minutes at 180 C.

When it's all golden on the top, remove from oven and leave to cool in the tin for 5 - 10 mins.

Remove from tin and decide which is the 'right' way up to serve the cake. I think with bundt tins the bottom is the top bit, but I don't really like the look of this side.

This looks much better to me. Slice and eat while still warm, but it's great cold too.

Ingredients:
3 medium bananas
60 ml oil (I use olive oil)
3 eggs
zest and juice of half a lemon (I use a little zest and a decent squirt of lemon juice)
1 tsp vanilla essence
200 g caster sugar (I use 140 g)
325 g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarb - or 325 g self-raising flour

Quick Apple Cake

When I made the Quick Apple Flan I said I would be interested to see how it turned out with self-raising flour instead of plain.

Thisevening I made the self-raising version, and it really worked out quite well. This time it was definitely a cake instead of a flan - much more fluffy and light, and less sticky. Quite a different dessert, which is why I decided to rename it and give it its own post.

Really good with custard. Original recipe here but replace the plain flour with self-raising.

This time I used two largish granny smith apples, and chopped them up a bit smaller to make slicing the cake easier.

Cheese and Bacon Rolls

My children love cheese and bacon rolls, which can be bought at any bread shop around Sydney (and probably all over the place, although not much comes up if you do a search, so maybe not - can you get them or something similar where you live?).

They're a good snack while you're out and about, and they're also good for lunchboxes.

I've been planning to try and make them for ages, and recently my friend Carol gave me a cheese and bacon roll recipe that she uses to make them for her children.

First make some bread dough and leave it to rise. (See this bread recipe if you need it to get to this stage.)

Push out the air from the risen dough, then divide it into several pieces - I made 12. Roll them into oval shapes, put them on baking sheets and cover them.

Leave them for half an hour or so to puff up slightly. (Ideally put them all straight onto baking sheets so you don't have to disturb them again. I usually do, but on this occasion my second baking sheet was already in use!)

Brush the tops of the breads with beaten egg, then sprinkle over diced bacon...

...and grated cheese.

Cook at 200 C for around 15 minutes until the bread is golden.

Best eaten still warm from the oven, but also pretty good the next day.

They freeze well, so you can make them, freeze them, and put them still frozen into lunch boxes, where they should defrost in time for morning tea or lunch.

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins (again!)

This time I used brown sugar instead of white sugar in this recipe and they are pretty good! Lovely crunchy top and fluffy interior.

So if you've got some blueberries and buttermilk hanging around, these (here and here) are good muffin recipes, and this blueberry buttermilk cake is worth making too.

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins (another version)

This is a slightly different version of blueberry and buttermilk muffins. The other ones I made contained demarara sugar and butter, while these have white sugar and oil.

Put flour and sugar in a bowl, and in a large jug put oil, buttermilk, egg and vanilla.

Add the buttermilk mixture and blueberries to the flour and sugar, and stir until combined.

Because of the white sugar, the mixture is very pale - I normally use brown or demarara sugar, so I was surprised at how white it was.

Spoon into muffin trays and cook at 200 C for around 20 minutes. My little muffins took 15 mins.
The cooked muffins have a golden, crispy top and are very light and fluffy inside. I'm used to the more solid, substantial and sticky muffins, so to me these are a bit like the 'white bread' version - not as tasty - more like a light cupcake.

But very popular with everyone else, and they come out of the muffin papers very cleanly with no residue, which is unusual for a muffin!

Ingredients:
2½ cups (375g) self-raising flour
¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup (160ml) vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
¾ cup (180ml) buttermilk
100 g blueberries

Based on this recipe.

Minced Beef Wellington

I made this for dinner last night, and as it wasn't a spectacular success, I wasn't sure whether to blog about it. But I decided to add it anyway, if only to remind myself how it turned out.

When I say it wasn't a success, it wasn't that no one liked it, because it was eaten and enjoyed. But I wasn't sure the time and effort it took was worth the result. Although as I discovered the next day, it tastes much nicer when it's cold.

(This recipe is from Jamie Oliver's book Ministry of Food.)

Firstly fry all the chopped vegetables in a large frying pan, in a little olive oil. Add a generous handful of frozen peas - or sweetcorn, which is what I used. Put them in a large bowl and allow to cool.

Add minced beef, egg, salt and pepper; and I also added a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce because I couldn't see how this wasn't going to turn out to be very bland otherwise!

Roll out the pastry to the size of a small tea towel (according to JO) or if you've got the ready-rolled pastry, defrost 4 or so slices.

Shape meat mixture into a sausage shape - or if you've got the square pastry, it's going to be several sausage shapes. Put the 'sausage' at one end and roll it all up. (If you have a tea towel-shaped bit of pastry, place it along the long edge.)

Roll it up completely...

...and then seal the ends. I used egg along the edges, but in the end I decided I would have been better with no 'glue' as the pastry was quite gummy already and the egg was making things more slippery.

I ended up making some little pasties aswell.

Put them on a baking tray, brush with egg and cook at 180 C for an hour. In the photos in the book, there are no slits cut in the top to let out steam, but I thought it was better to have them.

The cooked pies aren't very pretty! There was quite a lot of leaking out of the holes. But they got eaten up, with tomato sauce, and were quite filling.

I suppose my problem with this is that the filling was a little bland (I know I didn't follow the recipe exactly but I don't think that would have made a lot of difference) but then I'm not a big fan of meat pie in any form - I find they often have an unappetising 'steamy' flavour - so maybe that's why it didn't appeal to me much.

Part of one of the long 'wellingtons' was left over, and I kept it in the fridge overnight. We ate it at lunch time, and it was actually *much* nicer cold. So I would suggest this would make a good lunch dish or picnic food, cooked the day before.

Ingredients:
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 potato, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
2 large flat mushrooms, finely chopped (I left this out)
2 cloves garlic, minced/grated - I chopped mine finely
4 sprigs rosemary, leaves stripped and finely chopped (I used one sprig)
a big handful frozen peas (I used frozen corn)
1 large egg, beaten
500g good quality minced beef
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g puff pastry, or 4 or 5 sheets of ready-rolled

Leek and Sweet Potato Quiche

I made this quiche the other day when our friends Lisa and Ailin were coming over for lunch. It uses the olive oil pastry (the easiest pastry in the world) that I always use for quiche, so it's really quick to make.

Sarah, my sister, has a friend who uses the recipe - and she says that instead of rolling out the pastry, she just presses it into the quiche dish with her hands. I tried this and it works well, so now it's even quicker and easier! It gives a slightly ragged-looking edge, unless you spend a little time tidying things up, but raggedy edges don't worry me.

I lined the dish with the pastry, then put in a layer of leeks that I'd sliced finely and softened in a little butter and oil. I was planning to use onion, but the leeks were very reasonably priced today.

Then I put over a layer of thinly-sliced sweet potato.

I scattered over some creamy fetta cheese - and a little cheddar too, as I wasn't sure I had quite enough fetta - and added some chopped parsley.

To the eggy/milky mixture I added a generous teaspoonful of wholegrain mustard and some salt and pepper. As usual I had enough to make a mini quiche aswell.

Then I poured the egg/milk over, and cooked it for 45 - 60 mins at 170 C.

It was very tasty, I thought - mildly flavoured but not bland, and quite filling.

The original recipe for quiche is here

Ingredients:
pastry:
8 heaped tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
8 tbsp olive oil
8 tbsp water
filling:
1 medium onion or leek
1 small sweet potato
fetta/cheddar cheese
eggy topping:
3 eggs
400 ml milk (approx)
wholegrain mustard
salt, pepper