Chocolate and Banana Muffins

This delicious and easy recipe comes from my friend Christina. She generously cooked us a meal and brought along a batch of these. I had to freeze half of them straight away to stop myself from eating them all. I begged the recipe from her and we cooked up a batch the other day. I often find muffins dry but these are moist and light with only a mild banana flavour - quite different to a banana cake. This time I dropped off half to my husbands work, but still managed to eat alot!

I made another kids picture recipe like I did with scones back in May so Molly, my 5 year old, was able to do most of the steps herself, ably assisted by Ava of course!

I recently bought myself a silicon mini muffin tray made by Scanpan; it is great, the muffins cooked well and just fell out. My metal trays always stuck. :(

Chocolate and Banana Muffins

The recipe states it makes 12 muffins. I made 26 mini muffins plus 4 regular muffins.

2 C self raising flour
½ C castor sugar
½ C chocolate chips or cooking chocolate, chopped
½ tsp salt
100g butter
1 C milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 C mashed banana (2-3 mashed bananas)

Preheat the oven to 220C. Spray muffin tins if needed.

In a large bowl stir together the flour, caster sugar, chocolate chips and salt with a fork.
Melt the butter, remove from heat, then add the milk, egg and vanilla and beat well. Mash and measure the bananas and stir them into the liquid.

Tip all the liquid mixture into the bowl with the dry mixture. Fold everything together carefully until all the flour is dampened. Stopping before the mixture is smooth.

Spoon mixture into muffin tins. Bake at 220 C for 12-15 min until muffins spring back when pressed in the centre.

Vietnamese Smoked Trout and Vermicelli Salad

Lots of lovely people have been cooking us meals since Willa was born. My sister is visiting this weekend to meet her new niece. She made this delicious salad for lunch, I had to record the recipe because I will definitely be making it again. And she and her fiance are currently preparing dinner - Thanks!

Vietnamese Smoked Trout and Vermicelli Salad
You could substitute the smoked trout for cooked prawns or poached chicken.
serves 4

1/2 packet rice vermicelli noodles, cooked according to packet directions
1 whole smoked trout, flesh removed from bones and broken into pieces
1 telegraph cucumber,  cut into batons
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
handful mushrooms, sliced
1 bunch asparagus, cut into thirds and blanched
4 spring onions
handful mint leaves
handful coriander leaves
handful peanuts, chopped
handful fried onions/shallots
Dressing
3 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 C hot water
2 tbsp lime juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1 small chilli, finely chopped

Place cooked  noodles on a large platter or flat bowl. Top with vegetables, then fish then herbs and peanuts.

Dress the salad or offer dressing at the table.

Dressing
In a small jar, combine fish sauce, vinegar, sugar and hot water. Put the lid on and shake to dissolve sugar. Add remaining ingredients.

Willa - my new baby girl is here!

I gave birth to a beautiful little girl last Monday. We named her Willa Beth. Her sisters completely adore her, it is lovely seeing our three girls together.

Willa with gifts from her sisters

I don't think I will get much time for cooking or blogging in the next few weeks... Typing this one handed is rather slow.  But I am about to try and make a Blueberry and Apple Cake before the next breastfeed. I need cake to snack on!

I am using this recipe from Cuisine.com.au for Blueberry Bake but am going to add apple as well. Like all my favourite cake recipes at the moment it has sour cream in it. Will let you know how it goes.

Update: The cake was a success. I iced it with a maple syrup butter icing but next time might just stick with the lemon. I used 1 apple and 1 C blueberries, I think you could increase this to 2 apples, mixing one through the cake mixture and sprinkling one on top with the berries.