Freycob's Food Blog

Those that know me well know how much I love to cook and bake.  Savoury, sweet, it really doesn't matter as long as the ingredients are good, fresh and that my food is appreciated afterwards.

So, on that note and with a little bit of a spur on from James Perry AKA The Tattooed Cook from BBC's Masterchef, I've started Freycob's Food Blog to share with you my photos, recipes and take on kitchen creativity.

I really hope you enjoy what I'm about to share with you and that you leave me feedback if you try my creations or follow my tips.

For now.... my first recipe will be Rosie's Banana & Choccie Chunkie Muffins... enjoy!

Rosie's Banana & Choccie Chunkie Muffins

Had to get up early this morning as Jacob had an Athletics meet for the Air Cadets.  Not one to get up and then go back to bed, I decided that today was a baking day!  3 lots of muffins baked: Cheese & Red Onion, Philadelphia Blue (made up recipe but tasting good) and these, my banana and choccie chunkie muffins.

Those out there who LOVE Masterchef as much as me will know James Perry AKA The Tattooed Cook.  Well, James tells me that he struggles to make light and fluffy muffins, so at his request, I'm sharing my recipe with both him and you all out there.  You can see that the inside is really light, well risen and perfectly cooked.  (Click on the photos for a better look if you like).

So, James and everyone else, here's how to make these muffins:

10oz (280g) PLAIN flour.

1tsp (5ml) baking powder.

1tsp (5ml) bicarbonate of soda.

½tsp (2.5ml) salt.

4-5oz (110-140g) granulated sugar.

4-6oz (110-170g) white/milk chocolate chips/chunks.

3 large, well ripened bananas (about 1lb/450g) mashed.

1 egg, beaten.

3floz (90ml) corn oil (you can substitute melted butter for this, but remember the calories!).

2floz (60ml) milk (to reduce a few calories, you can use water instead, I suppose).

Oven: 200°C degrees (though I set my fan oven to 170°C)

1. Prepare your 12 cup deep muffin tin by lining it with paper cases.

2. In a large bowl mix the following: flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, sugar and chocolate.  Mix these together thoroughly with a fork to get some air into the dry mixture.

3. In another bowl mix together: Mashed bananas, beaten egg, corn oil and milk.

4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the full contents of the wet mixture.  Mix together quickly for no longer than 20-30 seconds until combined.  Make sure that you scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl properly to incorporate all of the dry mixture but DO NOT BEAT the mixture or worry about small lumps.

5. Fill each muffin cup to about 3/4 full.  This will then make 12 muffins.

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops are slightly browned and spring back when touched.

7. Transfer the cakes to a cooling rack until cold.

Tips & hints:

a) Buy bananas when they're reduced in the supermarket because they're over-ripe and they've gone a little bit brown on the skins.  These will give you the best, sweet flavour as the carbohydrate in the fruit will have turned from starch to sugar (which is why ripe bananas are easier to digest too).

b) You can freeze bananas for future use in baking.  The skins will go very dark brown/black but the fruit inside will stay creamy coloured.  If you do freeze bananas, make sure you defrost them thoroughly in a container as they WILL ooze juice.

c) Do NOT overmix the wet and dry ingredients together as this will start the chemical reaction with the gluten in the flour and cause your muffins to become dense & heavy.

d) Bake the muffins immediately after mixing as, again, a chemical reaction will start between the baking powder/bicarbonate of soda and the wet mixture.

If you do follow my recipe to make yourself some gorgeously light, fluffy and incredibly tasty muffins, please come back and leave me a comment and tell me how they turned out.  A photo of your creations would be great too!

Happy baking folks.

Rosie

x

Pencil Lines Sketch 235

Getting back into the swing of mojo-ness and scrapbooking as opposed to making cards all the while, I've taken part this week in the Pencil Lines Sketch.

My subjects are my gorgeous daughter and her adorable friend who have been close friends for many years; growing up together since they were toddlers.  Though they don't go to the same school, they live in the same street and sleep over / play together frequently.  Hopefully they will have a life-long friendship; they're very similar in nature, both polite, quiet, cheeky, hardworking girls with a wonderful sense of friendship and family. I love that they have each other so close at hand.

Creative ingredients:
Cardstock; Coredinations Whitewash - Alphas; BasicGrey; Spotty cardstock; My Minds Eye - Heart; Sizzix die - Buttons - Ribbon - Bakers Twine; The Twinery - Black & White journalling pens.

Kirby Hall

I've posted a couple of times in the past on visits to one of my local English Heritage site, Kirby Hall in North Northamptonshire.  Today I took Freya and her friend Beth over for a run around, and a little photo shoot.

We were amazed to see such a spectacular show from the Peacocks as he was trying to attract a mate.  Incredibly beautiful bird; so majestic.  The colours were picked up so brightly by the perfect weather, with cloudless blue skies.  All in all, a lovely couple of hours out with two perfectly behaved girls!

So, I thought I'd share a few of my peacock photos with you.

PaperPlay Challenges Wk17

Sponsorship this week on PaperPlay Challenge Blog is from Waltzingmouse Stamps who are generously giving 1 stamp set of winner's choice.

Your challenge is to use an object not intended for Crafting... Like Coins, Cans/Jars, Onion or Garlic Netted Bags, Shells, Cardboard box bits etc.

I was a little bit naughty on this challenge as my altered item IS something normally associated with crafting (in my eyes anyway) as it's an empty chocolate box and we all know that chocolate and crafting go hand in hand..... don't we?

The empty box was filled with gorgeous milk and plain truffles that my children bought me for Mothers' Day.  Best bit was that no-one else in the house actually liked them!!!!!!!

I have another of these boxes (though slightly smaller) that I altered and made a couple of years back but was in desperate need of another to store my increasing supply of ink pads in.

Creative ingredients:

Box; Chocolates - Paper; to be confirmed) - Alphas; Tim Holtz Grungeboard - Inkpads: Versamagic, Quick Quotes & ColorBox - Glitter; Stickles - Buttons - Twill

Kirsty Wiseman's Wednesday night online crop

Kirsty hosts an online crop via Ustream a couple of times a week on a Wednesday evening and tonight I had to do a bit of speed scrapping as I had to get my LO done and dusted within the hour so that I could concentrate on watching the final of Masterchef at 9pm.

AND I MADE IT TOO!!!!!! (I'm a bit sad that my fave Tom didn't win, but all credit to Tim on winning the title which was very well deserved).  No doubt the guys and Sara will ALL have very bright futures ahead of them in their careers as talented chefs and maybe there'll be a Michelin star (or two) with Tom's name on in the future!

Anyhoo, I digress.  My post is meant to be about a LO that I produced tonight, so here is that LO - a bit bright, so get your sunnies out and shade your eyes!

I bought the Spacehopper for Will as a Christmas pressie but Freya kind of bagged it as her own and within about 20 minutes of taking it outside it got it's first puncture which Will repaired.  Within about 10 minutes of it's next venture outside it had split completely!  Well that was £15 well spent NOT!!!!!!  I did manage to get a couple of indoor photos posed on it before it blew up though.

The cardstock is a VERY bright orange to match the vivid/lurid colour of the space hopper (oh, who also remembers these from their childhood days? Please say it's not just us two!)

While you're reading; can anyone please identify the BasicGrey patterned paper that I used?  I can't remember which range it was from.

Creative ingredients:
Cardstock - BasicGrey paper - Alphas; Woodware, BasicGrey & Thickers -  Tab; Sizzix die - Bakers Twine; The Twinery - Inkpad; QuickQuotes