Banana chocolate chip muffins

When I saw the photo for this month's sweet and simple bakes I was so happy. I love muffins. But when I saw the what was in the muffins the excitement slowly disappeared. Why? Because, they contained bananas. I am reliably informed by my mum that I loved bananas when I was younger. I have a feeling that overdosed on them as a child and now I don't like them.

But since retrying and liking broad and runner beans. I thought I should give them a go. All this week I have been writing a scientific paper and last night was not going well. I needed a break. The muffins were a perfect break. Muffins never take too long to make.


The recipe was great as it used mashed bananas where you would usually use milk. The presence of chocolate chips reassured me that if I didn't like the banana taste at least it would be broken by the taste of the chocolate.


Andrew and I made the mixture within 5 mins. The recipe actually made more than 12 muffins it was supposed to. I actually made 18. Enough to give to work colleagues without Andrew and I missing out.


Yet again the recipe was easy to follow and these were super quick to make. I think these could be a regular. Probably changing the chocolate chips for dried fruit, like cranberries.

The taste of the bananas was fine. Maybe this is the first step in me regaining my taste for bananas? Who knows! Check out the roundup on Sweet and Simple Bakes.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mouth started drooling as soon as I saw this month's recipe for Sweet and Simple Bakes. Andrew has a bit of an issue at the moment. He is getting more and more patriotic. He has now taken to calling pain au chocolate, chocolate bread. As he doesn't see why we should have to use the French words for things that can be translated into English. I think his PhD has effected his brain too. So when I told him that this months challenge was cookies, he pulled a face and said that we should call them biscuits!!! You would think that there were bigger issues in the world, but I think this is important to him! I do agree that we seem to put some cuisines on a peddlestool, especially French cuisine. As good as it is, we do have food to be proud of in Britain. Anyway I digress back to the cookies, oops I mean biscuits.


I owed my friend after she read 2 of my chapters, in fact I owed her big time. So I thought I could pay her back with the cookies.


After saying that I don't like white chocolate I decided to add dark and white chocolate. So I suppose these were triple chocolate, instead of double. I used chopped chocolate rather than chocolate chips.


I made them quite big. They were lovely and chewy. They seemed to go down well. I think that I have paid off my debt.

I asked Andrew to let me take a photo so I could show someone enjoying these lovely cookies but he couldn't stop laughing. You can't get the models these days . . .

Check out the round up which will be posted on the sweet and simple bakes website and the recipe can be found here

Cranberry and White Chocolate Flapjacks

On Thursday night I made cranberry and white chocolate flapjacks as part of the Sweet and Simple Bakes Event.

I attempted to make some flapjacks a couple of weeks ago but I tried to mix to recipes together and also cooked it a little too long. It resembled granola rather than flapjacks.

I have to say that these flapjacks were dead easy to make. Even if I did end up going to bed a bit later, as I waited for them to cool enough to put the white chocolate on top. Why do I always do these things at the last minute? I used Green and Black's white chocolate. I was a bit upset when they were taken over by Cadbury's but they are still a readily available organic chocolate. I am not a great fan of white chocolate. I much prefer the more bitter 70% chocolate. I find white chocolate a bit too sweet for my palate. I have to say that I am much more of a starter person than a dessert person.


I took the flapjacks into work for a tasting and I have to say they went down very well. Andrew looked a bit upset when I started to pack them up to take to work.

I look forward to next month's recipe and I am sure so are my work colleagues.