baby muffins prease

Having a toddler in the house we tend to always have an abundance of fruit, and because of that same toddler and her ever changing opinion on food these days ("no mummy, no like!"), we sometime have an abundance of fruit on the verge of going to that great compost heap in the sky.  Saying that, it always ends up being bananas so we always make banana bread or muffins with them.

My husband has never liked cake (weirdo) but always loved sweet breads (not sweetbreads, that's an entirely different thing, and in my opinion, gross).  Back when we lived in the US and during my "I'm-waiting-for-my-visa-so-I-can't-work-so-I'll-aim-to-be-a-Martha-Stewart-type-housewife-but-better-than-Martha-Stewart-and-without-the-criminal-record" phase, I found a great banana bread recipe which I've played around with ever since.  And, it happens to be gluten free.


Ok, so this isn't technically a new recipe but it was tweaked slightly both accidentally and purposefully this weekend.

The recipe - Gluten Free Banana Bread

110g/4oz butter (softened)
110g/4oz caster sugar
2 large eggs
3 large ripe bananas (the more over ripe the better)
175g/6oz rice flour
50g/2oz cornflour
2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt

- Set oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4
- butter loaf/mini muffin pan
- cream butter and sugar until pale/light/soft
- add eggs to the creamed sugar one at a time and beating well in between
- mash bananas and add to the sugar/egg mix
- sift rice flour/corn flour/baking powder/salt and fold carefully into the mix
- bake 11/4 - 11/2 hours for loaf / 25min for mini muffins (although watch these as the time does seem to vary oven to oven!)

"What was different?" I hear you scream with desperation (or was that me).

Batch No. 1 (the "Harpenden Half-Batch" that ended up not being gluten free)
On Saturday, having noticed that the bananas had gone black but only having one egg in the fridge, I decided to divide the quantities in half and make a smaller batch, however:
- I didn't particularly want half a banana lying around so I threw 2 bananas in (instead of 11/2 - look at me doing maths!).
- I have a couple of different jars of flour none of which are labelled and assumed (incorrectly) that the smaller jar of flour had rice flour in.  It didn't.  It was corn flour.  But I had already added it to the bowl so decided to live dangerously.
- Because of the corn flour incident, I replaced the corn flour I should have put in with self-raising flour.

I made mini-muffins (which my daughter still calls baby corn muffins, irrespective of the fact that these are not baby corn muffins) which were pretty damn more-ish albeit a little on the sweet side (and no longer gluten free).  That being said, there are very few left 2 days later.

Batch No. 2 (the "Berko Batch")
My daughter and I took a trip to my mother's house for Sunday lunch whilst the hubby was off at sports practise.  My husband told me today that he thinks I have ADD, and in true form whilst at mum's house I noticed she too had some black bananas.  She had asked for the recipe so I offered to make her some muffins.  The differences were planned this time, so:
- My mother has always been into weird and wonderful things and suggested I use something called "Kuzu" instead of the corn flour.
- The bananas were on the small side, so I used 5 instead of the suggested 3.
- I threw a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (for no good reason other than I felt like it) to help the muffins rise.

I made big muffins this time and the official taste tester (the bubba) devoured a whole one so by all accounts, the results were good.  I had a bite and they tasted great but with a little bit of a bitter aftertaste.  I think the aftertaste is down to the Kuzu, however this could also be down to the fact that without reading the instructions on the Kuzu box I tried to crush the Kuzo into a powder and then sift it in with the rice flour.  I then read the instructions on the Kuzu box and it says to dissolve the Kuzu into a little cold water first.  My impatience shoots me in the foot yet again...

My mother is taking them with her to a course for pilates instructors.  I await their feedback with baited breath!

So, what did I learn?  When you assume you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".