Banana and Toffee Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago I bought ‘Cupcakes’ by Sue McMahon for my friend for her birthday. She’s just got into baking and this book stood out from others in the book store as it was filled with recipes that I thought she’d actually cook. Do you ever find that with recipe books? There are only a couple of recipes you’d actually attempt and the rest are too complicated or are filled with random ingredients?

Anyway, I was saying to Josh how good it looked and how many of the recipes I would like to try and so being the sweety he is he bought it for me as a surprise! AND he used one of his own Christmas vouchers so we wouldn’t break our new year resolution. Lovely, lovely man.

I’ve already made a few of the cupcakes [much to Josh’s delight – I’m not sure how altruistic the gift really was!!!!], and would definitely recommend this book.
This week I made banana and toffee cupcakes. The cupcakes include mashed banana and I wasn’t sure if I really liked them at first, but they have been growing on me.
I think I boiled the toffee for too long too as it doesn’t look like the picture in the book. It’s still very tasty though.
Let me know if you try them and if you like them.

Toffee and Banana Cupcakes

For the toffee topping

–          100g butter
–          125g condensed milk
–          50g caster sugar
–          1 tbsp golden syrup (and one extra for eating when no-one is looking)

For the cupcakes

–          100g butter, softened
–          100 soft light brown sugar
–          2 medium eggs
–          100g self-raising flour
–          1 ripe banana, mashed

1. Make the topping:
Place the butter in a large bowl and melt it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Stir in the other ingredients and cook the topping for another 4-7 minutes in the microwave. I let mine boil for quite a while and I think I did it too much, so keep an eye on it and stir after every minute.
Leave the topping to cool.

2. Preheat the oven to 190⁰/375⁰F/Gas 5

3. To make the cupcakes, beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and flour and beat until the mixture is smooth. Fold in the mashed banana.
Divide the mixture between 12 cupcake cases and bake for 15 minutes.

4. Leave the cupcakes to cool and then spread the cooled toffee topping over them, and scatter over some chocolate sprinkles.

Can’t cook, or won’t cook?

I’ve  just been making some toffee cupcakes [a new recipe – I’ll post it if they turn out okay!] and got to wondering about people who can and cannot cook.

So, I’ve got a question for you to answer down in the comments section…

Do you think you can cook, and if not, why not?

I really appreciate my mum teaching me to cook. I’ve grown up eating good home-made food and I’ve been cooking on my own since I was about ten years old. I wouldn’t say I’m an amazing cook but I can confidently put a meal together for guests and I enjoy making new things.

However, I know people that get in a cold sweat when they think about preparing a meal and don’t have the first clue about how to cook certain things, or about portion sizes.

Why do you think this is? Surely anyone can follow a recipe? Maybe it’s just a case inexperience? Or are there simply just people who cannot cook?

I look forward to hearing what you think…!

When good muffins go bad

Okay…so I’m only posting this picture to encourage you. To make you feel better that everyone has bad days where their cooking goes horribly wrong.

So here we go…

 

Think I over filled the cases much?!

They might look bad (and I apologise for the TERRIBLE photo!) but they still taste pretty good.

Chocolate Muffins

–          250g Self Raising Flour
–          25g Cocoa
–          2 tsp baking powder
–          175g Caster Sugar
–          175ml Milk
–          2 large eggs
–          100ml Oil
–          75g Choc chunks
–          1-2 tsp vanilla extract
–          Handful of mini marshmallows

1. Preheat the oven to 180⁰C and line a muffin tin with cases and put a few mini marshmallows in the bottom of each case.

2. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder into a bowl and gently stir in the sugar. Stir in the other ingredients until mixed and smooth.

3. Spoon the mixture into the cases (about half full) and bake for 20 mins.

I think this recipe should make about 14 muffins? But as you can tell from my monstrous results I used too much mixture in each case and made 11 in total!

Let me know if it works for you.

P.S I’m trying to do lot more baking at the moment so if you’ve got any favourite recipes, be sure to share them in the comments!