Cornflake and raisin cookies

This is a really quick and easy recipe using store cupboard ingredients. It tastes like breakfast in cookie form! The cornflakes were soft after baking but definitely added texture to the cookie. I think I might try rolling the dough in cornflakes before baking next time to give more of a crunch - has anyone tried this? 

I'm sending these to Tea Time Treats hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and co-hosted by Kate from What Kate Baked. The theme this month is The Biscuit Tin and Cookie Jar. 

I'm also sending these to Credit Crunch Munch created by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. This month Janice from Farmersgirl Kitchen is the guest host.  These cookies can easily be made on a budget and is a great way to use up leftover cornflakes and raisins.

As cornflakes are traditionally eaten for breakfast, I think these would be suitable for the Breakfast Club this month which has a theme of 'Bakes'. The breakfast club was created by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and is guest hosted this month by Katie from Feeding Boys and a Firefighter.

 

 adding cornflakes to the mix 

Makes approximately 45 cookies

113g butter
125g brown sugar
245g raisins
220g plain flour
75g cornflakes
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Preheat oven to 170C. 
• Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.
• Cream the butter and sugar for a few minutes.
• Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. 
• Add in the vanilla extract.
• In a separate bowl, sift the flour then add the raisins to the flour and stir. 
• Add to the butter mixture and mix well.
• Finally stir in the cornflakes.
• Place coops of cookie dough spaced apart on a baking tray.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the bottom is cooked - these cookies don't brown much so be careful not to overcook them.
• Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Apple Cinnamon Chocolate Braid

Would you believe I've never made my own bread? Well, apart from banana bread and beer bread but they're not proper bread of the yeasted variety. I don't know why but I have this (irrational) fear of baking bread.  As you know I love entering blogging challenges and I realised I could enter quite a few challenges this month if I conquered my fear.

So I had a little think and initially thought of making a variation on a cinnamon roll but when I was browsing through pinterest I came across this apple braid by eat, live, run. As I'd already decided I would rise to the challenge of baking bread, I figured it wasn't too much more of a leap to start with a complicated looking one like this!! It was not too difficult in the end and I didn't end up crying over it - phew! Instead I did a little happy dance and couldn't wait to eat it as soon as it came out of the oven as it smelt so good baking. The bread was absolutely delicious! I loved the combination of apples, cinnamon and chocolate and the dough was surprisingly light (I was worried that I'd overworked the dough). Definitely best eaten warm but still good the next day.

So on to the challenges.  Calendar Cakes hosted by Laura from Laura Loves Cake and Rachel from Dolly Bakes chose bread, rolls and buns as Nov 17th is Homemade Bread Day. 

We Should Cocoa created by Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog and Chele from Chocolate Teapot which is guest hosted this month by Nazima from Franglaiskitchen chose bread or yeasted sweet dough bakes which have to include the compulsory ingredient chocolate. 

I'm also entering this to the Breakfast Club created by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and guest hosted this month by Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog. The theme of course is chocolate!

As apples are in season, I'm also entering this to Simple and in Season hosted by Ren from Fabulicious Food.

Last but not least, I am also entering this to Made with Love Mondays hosted by Javelin Warrior where the idea is to cook everything from scratch .

And to another challenge that Javelin Warrior told me about called Bake Your Own Bread hosted by Heather from girlichef and Connie from My Discovery of Bread.

 you'll need bread flour, sugar, cinnamon, yeast, apples, lemon juice and chocolate chips 

 apples with cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice 

 roll out dough into a rectangle shape 

 cut strips on both sides, leaving the centre of the dough uncut 

 place your filling - apples, cinnamon and chocolate in this case in the middle 

 start braiding from one end to the other 

 the finished product - it's going to be a giant bread! As there was a lot of apple/cinnamon/lemon juice left which I didn't want to waste ...

 .. I decided to brush it over the whole bread

 which leaked slightly but not too badly and it gave it a nice brown top after baking 

 best served warm. Vanilla ice cream essential optional. 

Recipe adapted from Eat, Live, Run 

For the Apple Filling
3 medium-sized apples
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons lemon juice
100g chocolate chips

For the bread
350g  bread flour
50g caster sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons vegetable oil

You can also make a glaze for the bread but I decided not to.

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• To make the apple filling, peel, core, and slice the apples into thin slices, then cut the slices in half. 
• Toss the apple pieces with the sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice. 
• Bake the apple filling in small tin for 15 minutes. 
• Remove from the oven and set aside. 
• Once it's cooled completely, stir in the chocolate chips - the chocolate will melt if you add it in too early! 
• (Note: Do not turn the oven off at this point. You will be using it to bake the finished braid.)
• To make the bread, mix the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. 
• Add the water and oil and mix the dough for 6 minutes using an electric mixer on medium-high speed.
• (The flour amount I've included here is more than suggested as I found my dough was still very wet - you may need to adjust this youself)
• Spray a smooth clean surface with cooking spray and turn the dough out onto the surface. 
• Knead the dough briefly to give it a smooth surface 
• Spray a rolling pin with cooking spray and roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about 12-inches by 16-inches in size. 
• Lift onto a greased baking sheet.
• Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut each side into strips about 1-inch wide down each side, leaving the center third of the dough uncut. 
• Spread the apple filling down the middle third of the dough. 
• Fold strips of dough into the center, crisscrossing the filling by alternating strips from each side. 
• Lightly press ends to seal, and straighten out the braid with your hands, if necessary, to straighten.
• Bake the braid in the oven for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let the braid cool for several minutes.

Bacon, Brie and Fig Muffins

I've been on a muffin spree lately. They are so easy to put together and are great for breakfast on the go. As part of my baking for my birthday last week, I wanted to make something savoury as some of my colleagues have less of a sweet tooth than me and I often get requests for savoury bakes.  I came across these bacon, brie and fresh date muffins and decided to give them a go. I changed the dates to figs so I could enter them into the one ingredient blog challenge hosted by Laura from How to Cook Good Food and co-hosted by Nazima from Working London Mummy.

My colleague who requested savoury bakes described these as the "bee's knees" and declared them the best thing I'd baked all year! I have to say that I was really impressed with the muffins - the flavours worked well together and it required no additional seasoning.  They were best eaten warm but still delicious at room temperature. Would you believe this is my first time cooking bacon and using fresh figs? 

I'm also entering this to Simple and in Season as figs are in season. I got mine fresh from the market and I really like the colour of the fruit inside. Simple and in Season was created by Ren from Fabulicious Food and this month is hosted by Katie from Feeding Boys and a Firefighter 

As figs are fruits, I'm also entering them to the Breakfast Club where the theme this month is fruit. This challenge was created by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and this month is hosted by Urvashi from The Botanical Baker.

 figs, brie and bacon

 bacon fried to a crisp and cut into small pieces

 mash the brie into the milk 

 adding the gorgeous figs to the flour mixture 

 end result 

 my new muffin cases 

 yum! 

225g plain flour
pinch of salt
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoon caster sugar
3 fresh figs (or 12 fresh dates, pitted)
2 tablespoon olive oil, for frying
15g butter, for frying
12 rashers smoked, streaky bacon
75g brie cheese, diced
150mls milk
50g butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten

• Preheat the oven to 180C. 
• In a large bowl, sift the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar and set aside.
• Using a knife dusted with flour, chop the figs (or dates) into small pieces and add to the flour mixture. 
• In a frying pan, heat the oil and butter over a medium heat and fry the bacon until crisp. 
• When it's cool enough to handle, cut the warm bacon into small pieces and stir it back into the warm juices in the pan.
• Cover with foil and set aside. 
• Mash the brie into the milk, then mix it into the dry ingredients along with the melted butter, eggs, fried bacon and any juices from the pan. 
• Mix lightly until just combined. 
• Fill the muffin cases and bake for 18-20 minutes until risen and golden. 
• Best served warm. 

Extra Moist Blueberry Muffins

This month, 2 of my favourite blogging challenges have combined to form Tea Time Random Recipes. It's such a brilliant idea and I love it! Dom has been planning world domination for months and I'm sure this is a small step towards that goal ;-)  It's going to be a massive month of glorious, random tea time treats and I can't wait to see the round up! The challenge was simple. Put together books that would have tea time recipes and randomly select one then randomly select a page. I dutifully did as I was told and came up with Scrumptious Muffins by Marc Grossman. It's a lovely little book full of scrumptious muffins as the title suggests!

I decided to use a random number generator to pick a random page - the book has 69 pages in total excluding the index and it came up with 16 which is extra-moist blueberry muffins. Yum! This is a great recipe for blueberry muffins and one that I will definitely be using again. It has a crumble topping which was delicious and the best part is that the berries didn't sink! The secret is to push the berries in after filling the mould with batter. Next time, I would fold half the berries in the mixture and then add the other half on top. The result was a really juicy, moist muffin bursting with blueberries! 

As mentioned I am entering this to Tea Time Random Recipes hosted by the Tea Time Babes Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked and Dashing Dom over at Belleau Kitchen, creator of Random Recipes.

I'm also entering these fruity muffins to Breakfast club run by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and hosted this month by  Urvashi from the Botanical Baker. The theme of course is fruit and there's plenty of that here!

 make a crumble topping  with butter, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon

 I decided to try out my new petal muffin cases which I couldn't resist buying

 The recipe says to add the blueberries at the end, sinking it into the mixture - this is the fail proof method of preventing berries sinking that I have been looking for so take note everyone! 

 sprinkle the crumble on top before baking 

 juicy, plump muffins 

 Extra moist muffin indeed :) 

I will post the recipe if I get permission from the publisher

Banana, peanut butter and nutella spelt bread

Quick recipe post today with an indulgent banana bread. I love baking with bananas and have all sorts of banana recipes. However, I almost always go back to combining it with peanut butter or chocolate or both! This bread has peanut butter chips, chocolate chips and nutella! It also has spelt flour and bananas so I don't feel too guilty having a slice or two :) It's quite indulgent and not an everyday bread but it's perfect for weekends or holidays. The bread is moist and you can definitely taste the peanut butter in there. I know I burnt my nutella top but it actually tastes quite good - I love the crusts and crispy bits. If you try this recipe, remember to cover with foil before baking!

I'm entering this to the Breakfast Club hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours as the theme for this month is Holiday!

Adding in peanut butter chips and chocolate chips

  Add blobs of nutella on top ... 

.... and give it a little swirl

oops burnt the top as I forgot to cover with foil

... still tasted good!

 I love the nutella crust and you can see the chocolate chips/peanut butter chips in the slice - yum! 

3 ripe bananas
140g peanut butter
60mls vegetable oil
1 egg
50g caster sugar
50g brown sugar
185g spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
100g milk chocolate chips
100g peanut butter chips
3 heaped tablespoons nutella

• Preheat the oven to 180C. 
• In a medium sized bowl, whisk the bananas, peanut butter, oil, egg and sugars. 
• In a separate bowl, mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt. 
• Make a well in the centre of the banana mixture and pour in the flour mixture. 
• Stir gently until just mixed - do not over mix 
• Fold in the chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. 
• Pour into a loaf tin and smooth the top with a spatula. 
• Add 3 big blobs of nutella on top spaced apart. 
• Use a knife or toothpick to swirl the nutella. 
• Cover with kitchen foil after about 20 minutes to avoid burning the top. 
• Bake for approximately 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.