BAKING FOR THE BRAVE

Recipe: Banana Bites

Time Taken: Half an hour max

Ingredients: A banana, a big handful of fruit n nut & shitloads of oats

 

Hi readers,

If you’re reading this, that means you must have survived the first Monday of 2015. Did you realise? I literally salute you for your efforts! We’re all Trojans today! And we are survivors.

 

So, I’m Hayley and I survived the first Monday of the year. But parts of today I did not like! Today’s been a tough one! I’ve had a bad exam… I’ve been subject to extortion once more from Specsavers (the swindling bastards)… and I’ve not been feeling superb. And it’s been COLD.

 

However, my Monday hasn’t been the worst. I wasn’t the guy who tried to take a ladder up the escalator with him in Wilko and ripped a hole in the ceiling with it. I wasn’t the Chinese student who was hit by a car on Percy Street. I wasn’t the person who let rip reeeally loudly in pilates (just for the record!). And I bet your Monday hasn’t been the worst on Earth either. Truly, someone will have had a worse day than you. They will!

 

Try to be grateful for something good that came of your Monday. Like, for meeee… Well, firstly, I had pancakes for breakfast this morning and they tasted awesome. I reheated ones from the batch I made yesterday (see my last blog post!) and served em up with banana and honey. This was a TOP shout.

 

Secondly, I walked to uni and both a dog walker and a cyclist smiled at me on the way. I smiled back.

 

Thirdly, my Pilates instructor chatted to me today and said that she liked my leggings. I have been taking her classes at the gym for two years now, along with having been in several of her geography lectures (this woman is a living Wonderwoman), and never thought that she noticed me. I really look up to her. And today she chatted to me. I was dancing inside.

 

Fourthly, I came in this evening from my dreadful exam, to find that my Forever 21 order had arrived… AND EVERYTHING FIT. This never happens. New sales clothes for me!

 

And fifthly, finally, I baked some terrific Banana Bites last night that I munched on for lunch at the library. And they brought sunshine to my tum. One of my best friends (for the blog I’ll call her Floss as I feel this is her true name) gave me the recipe last night and when I got home I literally made some straight away. Saddo I am. And now you have to go bake some so that they can be one of the good things about your day tomorrow!

 

But, before that just have a think, what’s been good about your day today? Have a proper think and I hope you can come up with at least 5 things like I did, even though parts of today were horrendous for me. Always remember to be grateful for each day!

 

Soooo, without further ado, here’s how to bake Banana Bites in ten easy steps...

1. Heat your oven to 200˚C.

2. Use a fork to mash a banana in a bowl.

 

3. Add a big handful of raisins and peanuts.

 

4. Chuck in some oats.

 

5. Stir it up!

 

6. Keep adding oats and stirring until your mix has a consistency like porridge.

7. Grease a baking tray.

8. Spoon your mix onto the tray in 4 biscuit-sized rounds.

 

9. Safely transport your tray into the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

10. When your Banana Bites are golden brown lift em out of the oven and leave to cool on the tray.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: You might want to turn one of the Bites over to check it’s baked underneath and not gooey still. Otherwise, your Bites might go soggy. Not good.

And that’s it! Here’s my Banana Bites fresh out of the oven :)

 

Aren’t these incredible? There’s nothing bad in them! Aaaaaall the ingredients are healthy. So these are a totally guilt-free munch. But it feels like you’re having a massive treat! Banana Bites are chewy and they’re filling and they’re so moreish. And somehow they taste like childhood.

I can’t believe this recipe works. That it’s possible to make something healthy with so small and so healthy a bunch of ingredients. You barely use any dishes. You barely lift a finger, really. Gah. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THESE BEFORE. Thank you endlessly Floss for letting me in on the secret.

Readers, go bake. And know that tomorrow will be a better day.

Munch safely,

Hayley

COOKIES FROM DARKEST PERU

Recipe: Chocolate Marmalade Cookies

Time Taken: Three quarters of an hour

Ingredients: 150g butter, 80g sugar, 1 egg, 6 tablespoons marmalade, 250g plain flour, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, 75g plain chocolate & a Terry’s chocolate orange

Here’s the ingredients minus the choc sorry

(it was otherwise engaged)

Evening readers,

Today, it’s Friday! And I know for a lot of you out there it’s been your last day of work before Christmas!! Well done! You’re finished! Hurrayyyyy! You can OFFICIALLY kick off your shoes and put on your Christmas jumper. Get yourself a tin of biscuits and the TV remote. Shout someone to pour you a Bailey’s… then go get it yourself. Back to the settee and park! That’s it: you’re in position for Christmas!!

It’s bliss! Give it a week or so and you might be where I am with festivities. That is, setting an alarm for NO REASON in the morning. Literally, just so you’re awake to see the morning for a change. That’s what I did today! And it wasn’t half bad, readers. I went for a waaaalk, I caught Lorraaaaine, I wrote out all my deadline dates! It was a slight improvement on being on bed. I think.

The view this morning!

Anyway, this afternoon I started googling recipes with marmalade in them. My mum’s been requesting some marmalade-themed baking since we went to see the new Paddington Bear film together last weekend! And it’s a whole world! There’s so many recipes to go at! I’ve never really eaten marmalade before and it’s not something I keep in my cupboards, but I’m definitely game for trying it out in some new baking.

And this started today! The recipe I chose online in the end was a simple one for marmalade cookies. Everyone’s in grazing-mode at home and I thought a cookie would be something small enough for people to snack on. And I had a cool idea for how to decorate them! Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are on offer at the moment at our corner shop and I had the idea to use the chocolate segments to put on top of my cookies. Because everyone loves Terry’s… especially me!

Here’s how to bake up your own Chocolate Marmalade Cookies…

1.       Heat your oven to 200ᵒC.

2.       Line 3 baking trays with greaseproof paper.

3.       Measure your butter and sugar into a mixing bowl, and cream together with a wooden spoon.

4.       Spoon your marmalade and crack your egg into the bowl. Stir it up!

5.       Measure out your flour and baking powder. Stir half into the mix, then add the other half and stir again… until you have thick, smooth cookie dough.

6.       Use a tablespoon to dollop your mix out on the baking sheets.

7.       Then, use the back of a teaspoon to smooth your balls of dough into cookie shapes.

8.       Bake in the oven for ten minutes!

ChefBeHere Top Tip: I forgot about mine ENTIRELY. I left them in the oven waaaay too long. As a result, they went black around the edges and stuck to the baking paper. No joke. I had to try to CHISEL them off. Many were lost. Don’t do this.

9.       Leave your cookies to cool. Meanwhile, separate the segments of a Terry’s chocolate orange.

10.   Melt your chocolate in the microwave (or over boiling water on a hob if, like my dad, you still haven’t bought a microwave) and decorate your cookies with it! Pop an orange segment on top of each cookie to finish them off.

Here’s how they came out!!

In the end, I think I finished about 16 cookies, but if you don’t weld them to the paper like I did you could stand to bake a good 20-24. I recommend spacing them so there are only about 6 to a tray maybe, because I tried to get 8 on a tray and some of my cookies got more than friendly. There was some merging and mingling of cookies in the oven. It was a hotbed for cookie baby-making action.

Even though my cookies are sort of “made with love” (Read: They went tits up!), these babies still taste bloody good! I was eating all the non-burnt broken pieces as I decorated the good ones and I can vouch for the orangey, buttery flavour of this recipe. These cookies are really festive! And I fail to see how chocolate on top can have made them worse. So, they’re sort of a success?? Not in the way I’d imagined, but still! These cookies are, somehow, decent!

So have a go!! Don’t burn them like me and don’t stick them to the paper, and you’ll possibly have made the best cookies ever! I’m sure Paddington Bear would think so, anyway. And you’d have to leave your lovely, warm Christmassy home to go buy proper cookies from the shop, so why not stay in and have a try at making your own?? This was a fun bake and I hope some of you are inspired to take it on. Spreading the fun. Plus, I know you can do better than me! I believe! Go cookie-fy your kitchen this Christmas.

Bake safely squirts,

Hayley

OH MY OATS

Good evening!

Is it a good evening? Of course it’s good evening! I hope you’re having a wonderful, relaxed, chilled out time. Well deserved after a hard day’s work, I’m sure. You’re worth it. Today’s been a funny one for me. Having had a night out last night, I woke up in a pretty poor state today.

A definite hangover gremlin.

I decided to take the morning for recovery. This turned into ‘working from home’. Then a blatant acknowledgement that me surviving the day would be achievement enough. Today was not the day for moving mountains. Shifting my headache would do.  Its day’s like these, of self-inflicted gloom, that I wish for certain things.

Like family…

… A dog …

… Just a hug! ...

… And (weirdly today) curtains.

 

Student houses don’t have them. I’d really like to draw together some heavy, velvet, floor-sweeping drapes. Oh satisfaction. But home days are also good. They don’t ask too much of you and you can take the time to appreciate little things.

Like socks…

… Tealights…

… Cuppas…

… And a good book :)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I realised that CHRISTMAS IS A MONTH TODAYYYY! Wahooo!

I also realised that I was mooching about a house filled with baked goods!! So, yesterday, I thought that I was going to be helping to host a charity bake sale today. It got called off, I’m afraid, but not before I did my baking for the sale!! Yesterday I was being a busy bee but I still found the time to get my bake on. And baked on a big scale.

Here are some twenty four girly cupcakes I baked!

I ALSO baked up one of my two signature recipes. Now, these recipes are my ULTIMATE best things to bake. They’re the recipes that I know off my heart without a book. And this is good because the book pages are long since stuck together with mix! My flatmates usually get to enjoy one or the other of these recipes at least once a month. I love to spend time baking these, they aren’t hard to bake, and they taste really good! No fancy ingredients needed and no high-tech equipment. None of that. My two signature recipes are… Banana bread! …. And Oat Crunchies! And yesterday I baked some Oat Crunchies. :) This is a recipe I originally found in the ‘Vegetarian Nosh for Students’ cookbook and it TASTES SO GOOD.

Want to bake some Crunchies yourself? Here’s how, in ten easy steps…

Recipe: Oat Crunchies

Time taken: Half an hour

Ingredients: Porridge oats, desiccated coconut, self-raising flour, sugar, butter & golden syrup

1. Preheat your oven to 180˚C.

2. Find a mug. Measure a mug of oats, a mug of coconut and a mug of flour into a mixing bowl.

3. Add half a mug of sugar and stir this all together with a wooden spoon.

4. Melt 100g of butter in a saucepan on a low heat.

5. When this is all melted, add a tablespoon of golden syrup and three tablespoons of water.

6. Stir until this all combines together, then add it to the bowl of dry ingredients and give it a good stir until the mix comes together into one modge.

7. Use a little bit of butter to grease a pair of baking trays.

8. Take a small handful of the mix at a time and squeeze it into a ball in your hands. Place this on the baking tray and squash it down gently.

9. Keep repeating this and spacing your Crunchies a little apart on the baking trays, since they tend to spread when they cook. I usually make about 8-12, depending how big they are.

10. Carefully escort your baking trays into the oven and bake your Crunchies for 10-12 minutes until they’re golden brown and you can safely take them out. You can enjoy these warm, or leave them to cool and decorate them any way you like!

ChefBeHere Top Top: When your Crunchies are in the oven, it’s a good idea to swap the trays around after five minutes. I know in our oven things on the top shelf bake more quickly than things underneath them on the bottom shelf. You don’t want to over bake one tray and end up with Crispies rather than Crunchies!

And there you have it, a batch of sweet, oaty, mouth-welding treats! I’ve yet to find a person who doesn’t approve of my Crunchies. I certainly enjoy them and our house is filled to the brim with them! Not for long….

Here are the Oat Crunchies I made yesterday

And some I made a different day

Aaaaand a close up shot  from another day to drool over

Tempted yet? Go bake! What are you waiting for?? You need these in your life. And these earn you some BIG LOVE from friends and family. Suddenly they like you again. They want to know when to expect the next batch. You have a purpose in life.

In my case, my faith in my baking has been restored following the Peach-Related Meltdown I had last week (see my blog post from Sunday, go on). I’ve still got it! And Oat Crunchies have been a much-need remedy today to one hell of a hangover.

This has been me alllll day…

What do you think of Oat Crunchies?? Are you in love? Can you unstick your jaw enough yet to speak?? I want to hear what you think. Shout it out!

And crunch safely,

Hayley