Healthy banana bread

I am always in search of good snack food that is delicious but not full of sugar so I made this adapted banana bread recipe which is a great way of using up overripe bananas and fills that criteria perfectly.

It doesn't have much sugar because the banana adds sweetness and I use half and half sugar and honey. I also use half coconut oil and half butter but if you wanted an extremely virtuous version you could use 100% honey and 100% coconut oil.

Sliced banana bread

Ingredients

Half cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1 egg
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
2 big ripe bananas (or 3 smaller ones)
20g melted butter, 20g melted coconut oil (or whatever ratio suits you)
Pinch salt
Half cup porridge oats or oatmeal
One cup flour (I used white but you could use wholemeal)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Optional: 50g roasted hazelnuts or pecans roughly chopped. You could also add dark chocolate chips for a great version.

Method

1. Mash the banana in a big bowl and beat in the sugar, honey, egg, melted butter/oil, salt and cinnamon.
2. Use a metal spoon to stir in the oats, flour and baking powder gently. Stir in the nuts/chocolate chips if you are using them.
3. Line a small loaf tin with baking paper and spoon in the mixture
4. Bake at a low temperature (175 degrees centigrade) for about an hour but check after 50mins by inserting a skewer into the centre to see if it comes out clean.

Leave to cool slightly before slicing so it doesn't fall apart.

Serving suggestion - almond butter and fresh banana

This is great on its own but I love it topped with almond butter and fresh banana for a filling snack.

Amateur upholstery

I recently moved into an unfurnished flat in Hackney, London and as a consequence ended up begging, borrowing and scavenging for bits of furniture.
My grandparents generously donated a couple of kitchen chairs which I love, but were a bit worse for wear with sagging seats and faded upholstery.

I had wanted to recover them for a while when I discovered a draper's shop nearby and some lovely patterned fabric. I bought half a metre and borrowed a staple gun from a friend and was good to go!

Finished seat

What you need

Upholstery fabric (it needs to be robust fabric to take the staples)

Extra stuffing (if like me your seats are sagging)

Staple gun and staples

You could use vintage or second hand fabric as you only need a relatively small amount.

Instructions

Remove the seat from the chair and check the state of the current padding. You may not need to restuff it at all. If you do, use some extra stuffing from an old cushion to pad it up. The chairs may have straps to keep the stuffing in so make sure they are stapled in place firmly. If the whole lot is worse for wear then I would recommend buying some new ones.

Underside of seat with extra stuffing

• Once your seat is stuffed, measure out your fabric, making sure that you have enough to fold over the sides of the seat. Cut the fabric to the approximate size. It's better to have a slight surplus than not enough. 
• Place your fabric best side down and position the seat face down on top, making sure there is an even excess of fabric for each side. If you have pattered fabric make sure the pattern is aligned / facing the right way. 
• Use a staple gun to fix one side down. If you use sturdy staples you will need 3 or 4 per side.
• Move to the corner and carefully cut a slit in your fabric in line with side you have just fixed until about 1 inch from the corner to help give a neat fold.
• Fold the second side down making sure that the fabric is tight over the seat and that the corner is neatly folded.
• Staple as before and then continue to the next two sides, taking care with the corners as before. Make sure that the fabric is pulled  tight and that there are no wrinkles.

And that's it! It doesn't give the tidiest finish on the underside of the seat but if you are worried about that just measure the fabric very accurately and fold the edge over before you staple.

I would definitely do this again to update my chairs and it was very satisfying.

Finished chair

Sinless snickers truffles

This is my first post in a long time! I have taken up rowing again and so have been quite busy but also more focused on nutrition. These sweet treats are the perfect solution to when you are craving something really really naughty but still want to nourish your body and eat clean. I am not easily satisfied but even just one of these really does the trick...

Ingredients (makes 10)

6 large medjool dates
Half tsp sea salt
Tsp coconut oil
Peanut butter
70% cocoa dark chocolate

Method

1. Blend the dates (remove the stones if needed) and coconut oil with a hand blender or mixer 
2. Stir in the salt and use a tea spoon and your fingers to shape the mixture into balls. Put them in the freezer to firm up for 20 mins
3. Take the balls out of the freezer and spoon a blob of peanut butter on the top and put back in the freezer for another 20 mins
4. Melt about 60g dark chocolate in a small bowl and drop the balls one by one in the chocolate, covering them with a thin later before putting them on a plate lightly greased with coconut oil and refridgerating
5. When the chocolate has set transfer them to a container and keep them in the fridge until you want to eat them

Enjoy! x

Late summer village show success!

A few weekends ago I went back to my roots and entered a neighbouring village's village show. This consists of the usual raffle, tombola, dodgy second hand clothes and bric-a-brac and, what I consider to be the main event, the show.

There are various classes and this year I decided to 'go big' on the preserves. I entered apricot jam, red onion marmalade (recipe on this blog), rhubarb and vanilla vodka and whisky marmalade. 

There were around a dozen competitors and 7 different classes, and I'm thrilled to announce that I won the preserves cup! This unfortunately involved beating my mother which she was none too pleased about, but hopefully thought it was testament to her coaching. 

Due to a historic rule that the cup cannot leave the participating villages, I have unfortunately had to leave the glamorous trophy at my parent's house, however I couldn't resist boasting with a few pictures on here....

Apricot Jam

I used French Apricots for this recipe and used the usual half fruit to half sugar (by weight) method as described for other jams on this blog. 

Whisky orange marmalade

I made this quite a thick cut marmalade and added a shot of whisky (for a 5 jar yield) just before spooning the jam into jars. Makes a good Christmas present!

Red onion marmalade

See my previous post for this recipe. I have found it to be a firm favourite and very versatile. I love onions but they very rarely shine in their own right. This sweet and sticky condiment does just that. Try with sausages, cold meats, cheese or on pizza with goat's cheese!

Rhubarb, vanilla and strawberry vodka

Rhubarb and vanilla vodka

For this liqueur I took a 750ml glass bottle and chopped a medium stalk of rhubarb into half length ways and then into small chunks and put them in the bottle. I then added half a vanilla pod and a could of tablespoons of sugar. 

After infusing for a month or so I tasted the result and found it a bit heavy on the vanilla. I therefore sieved the contents to remove the rhubarb and vanilla, and then reinfused the vodka with some more rhubarb and a couple of strawberries for good measure. 

The result was rather delicious served straight, ice cold!

The next day I went foraging around the village for some late summer spoils and was well rewarded for the trouble. The resulting bounty of blackberries and apples, sloes, plums and raspberries were used in a crumble, to make gin, as a snack and to decorate fairy cakes (respectively). A very successful weekend!

For those of you who may feel moved to enter a village show. My top tips would be:

1. Don't stress about it, enter some preserves you have entered during the year that have gone well
2. Pay attention to presentation. Fill jars 1cm from the top, make sure the jars aren't sticky and use nice jars and labels
3. Enter lots of classes for the best chance of WINNING (but of course it's taking part that counts ;) )

Healthy energy boost banana bars

I have a terrible mid morning and mid afternoon snack habit but these bars ARE THE ANSWER. They keep you full and give you a boost of energy to get you through the rest of the day...

Ingredients

2 large ripe bananas

2 cups oats

Tbs of peanut butter

Tbs honey

Handful pistachios

Handful dried fruit (dates, figs, prunes, raisins)

 Method

1. Squish the bananas with a fork
2. Stir in the rest of the ingredients
3. Spread on a baking tray lined with waxed paper so the the bars are an inch thick
4. Bake at 180 degrees for around 15 minutes until the bars have baked but are not dry and have some give in them

Have one of these with a cup of tea and you won't be reaching for lunch before 12 anymore :)

Variations

You don't have to put peanut butter in these and you can put whatever nuts, seeds and dried fruit you like in. For those super healthy among you, you can add coconut oil and flax seeds too...

Wedding gift - my first commission!

One of my friends recently went to a festival themed wedding, and asked me to help her create a homemade gift as the bride and groom did not want traditional presents.

We decided we couldn't go wrong with something boozey so I made raspberry gin (for the flavour, versatility and gorgeous deep pink colour). I think it went pretty well!

All you need to do is find a pretty (clean) bottle and put around 150g raspberries and 1 tbsp sugar in the bottom. Fill it up to near the top with gin and leave to infuse for a month or so. Invert the bottle to mix it every few days (later on in the infusion time this doesn't matter so much) and add a bit more sugar if you want it sweeter. If you are intending to mix it will prosecco, tonic or lemonade I would recommend leaving it tart...

I tied a gift tag with cocktail recipe suggestions around the stem of the bottle and tied it with a ribbon and added a homemade card (see previous post!) to complete the gift. 

Sewing projects for beginners

I am qualified to write this blog post as I am very much a beginner sewer!
I have done some hand sewing in the past (mostly mending, sewing on buttons etc) but this weekend I got to grips with a mini sewing machine and really enjoyed it. I bought some pretty patterned fabric from Birmingham's RAG market (£2 a meter!) and had a go at some bunting and homemade cards. I was amazed by how quick it is to make projects compared to knitting, but then, they were very simple projects.

Homemade fabric cards

Kitchen bunting

Simple bunting

The first project I tried was simple bunting. You can incorporate a lot more sewing into bunting but as it was my first go I thought I would keep it simple. I won't include instructions for setting up a sewing machine here as it should be included in the manual. I would recommend doing a few practice runs on some scrap fabric or thick paper first though!

You need:

Pinking shears (scissors that cut the fabric in a zigzag so it doesn't fray)

1/4 meter fabric in 2 or more patterns / colours

2 meters bias binding in a pretty colour

Sewing machine threaded up with colour of your choice (contrasting with fabric could be nice or if you want to hide uneven stitches choose the same colour for now!)

My friend gave me her mini sewing machine after upgrading to a proper one. Using the mini was no problem for these projects and she said it cost about £30 so definitely worth it so far!

Instructions

1. Cut out fabric triangles, about 4 inches long. Make sure they look the same. Cut out enough to fill your 2m bais binding with a good length left over at each end for tying (I did 8). 
2. Fold your bias binding with an edge of the triangle trapped between and as far in as it will go, so the finished bunting will have triangles hanging straight all to the same length
3. Use your sewing machine (I used straight stitch as my mini one only does that!) to sew all along the length of the bias binding, trapping the fabric triangles in as you go. Voila!

Finished bunting

Handmade cards

For these cards I cut out little bits of fabric and used the sewing machine to stitch them onto plain cards, much like in my other homemade cards posts. I think these are my favourite though and by far the quickest to make. I'll be looking through Pinterest for some more inspiration for my next batch!

Little heart with balloon string

Bird - two different types of fabric

My bunting in miniture!

Letter card for my friend Isobel

Homemade cards

My friend and I felt the need for a relaxing evening in with tea yesterday so I cooked and she brought round some blank cards and coloured cardboard and we had a great time seeing what we could do.

What you will need

Glue

Scissors

Letter stamps and ink

Coloured card

Blank cards and envelopes

What you might need

Knitting stuff

Wool

Ribbons

Buttons

Marker pen

You can buy all this stuff online cheaply but in terms of what you stick on the cards, I would encourage you to keep a 'bits and bobs' box with crafts things for occasions like this. 

Making the cards

We got quite a lot of inspiration from 'Pinterest' but also just had a go at things to see how they turned out with mixed results.... Generally we found that simple was effective!

Simple red card cut out and letter stamps....

Triangular coloured card bunting, wool and letter stamps

Thick ribbon, card heart shape and letter stamps

Knitted strawberries, ribbon and letter stamps

Coloured card shapes and letter stamps

 As you can see, we made a lot of use of simple card shapes. I really like sewing cute knitted shapes on too, previously I have done a little knitted mug ('You're my cup of tea!') and my friend received a card with a little knitted house on the front when we moved in together. I'm definitely going to try ore of those in future.

Friends, expect a homemade card soon!