I ended up making four batches of banana bread mini muffins last night, because I’d pulled out 12 bananas from the freezer and they were all thawed, and I started baking a little late, so I needed to ask Kevin to come and help me with the second batch while I sat on the couch and watched The Great British Sewing Bee, because at 11 p.m., I was too tired to be baking, but he was a trooper, and they came out delicious.
I don’t have a written recipe for you, but basically I started with taking the liquid from the thawed bananas and reducing it by half on the stove, to give a more concentrated banana flavor. Then took half of that and made a double batch of banana bread (follow any standard reliable recipe) mini muffins (about 15-20 minutes at 350). Melted about a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, dipped the cooled muffins, sprinkled them with about 1/2 a cup of chopped salted roasted cashews. Very tasty.
Batch two was spiced mini muffins — I used raw sugar instead of regular, added about 1/2 a cup of chopped cashews to the batter, along with ground cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.
These will be going in the Patreon boxes for September — there are 15 treat box subscriptions left, $10 / month, 3 boxes / year. If you subscribe this week, you’ll get the September box, so that’s $30 off your first box, which is 75%, so a pretty great bargain. 🙂 I haven’t decided yet what’s going in the September box, though — it’s a bit of a mystery. Definitely some of these and some passionfruit marshmallows, though.
Still a little too harried to bake from scratch (Kev comes back today, yay!), but I’ve found a banana bread mix I really like (yes, I know those are pumpkins, but I have multiple pretty pumpkin molds, no banana molds (haven’t found any pretty ones), and a habitual excess of bananas in our freezer), and that makes it easy. Miss Jones mix (link in comments). Zinnias by neighbor Sera Sera.
One of my favorite snacks is mas paan (buns stuffed with beef and potato curry) and malu paan (buns stuffed with fish curry). It is very comforting, having a few dozen in the freezer, knowing that you can pull one out whenever you’re having a curry craving, and just toast it up in the toaster oven and enjoy with a nice hot cup of sweet milky tea. Perfection.
I did develop a dough recipe for the cookbooks, but the truth is that I never actually make it from scratch. I just buy frozen bake-and-serve dinner rolls at the grocery store and use those.
I recently had both beef curry and cabbage varai on hand, and I thought they might go well together — Dear Reader, they are DELICIOUS in a roll, and now you’ve got entire meal in there, with a veg. as well as the bread and meat. Perfection. I also tried cooking some carrot in with the beef and potato, and that worked great too. (I recommend at least two rolls for lunch. Three or four if you have a hearty appetite.
If using the frozen rolls, follow the instructions on the package to let them thaw and rise. Then tear them open and stuff them with curry and shape it into a ball again, with the seam on the bottom. It’ll look lumpy, but don’t worry about it, and don’t feel like you need to let it rise again — just pop those in the oven for 15-20 minutes, and they’re good
Hmm…I think I need some breakfast.
Chai-spiced pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips. They are very delicious, and my kids have been devouring them, but I forgot the baking soda, oops! So they didn’t rise properly.
I’m going to make another batch soon, I think, so will post photos & recipe then – the next batch will go in the autumn treat boxes, which I’m hoping to ship out next week. Lots of sweets-making in the days to come. Watch this space.
(Autumn treat boxes are closed, sign up now for winter! A great holiday gift….)
