Banana Muffin and a great weekend

This week has been splendid.....lots of sunshine and everyday almost perfect blue sky. Still a little bit on the chilly side, but hey I can't complaint for this lovely weather, it has been a freaking cold winter. Even my spring bulb flowers had been delayed...... I started to see some coming out and some early flowering crocuses and iris make my day. :-)
Initially I intended to bake banana cake but somehow decided at the last minute to bake muffin instead, as I've no access to my laptop for banana cake recipes. Therefore I always fall back on my ole good muffin recipes book on the shelf.

Banana muffin
Ingredients (make 11-12 muffins)

• 280 gm plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp soda bicarbonate
• pinch of salt
• 100 gm sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 ripen bananas (weighs around 1 pound)-mashed
• 85 gm melted butter
• 90 ml milk
• 3 tbsp rolled oats
• a handful of chopped walnut (optional)

1. Seive the flour, baking powder and soda bicarbonate into a mixing bowl. Add in the sugar.
2. Preheat oven to 190C-200C.
   
3. In another bowl, mix bananas, butter, milk and rolled oat. Pour this mixture into (1)
4. Lightly beat the egg and mix to (1). Add in essence vanilla and drop in chopped walnut.
   
5. Mixed well all the ingredients. Scoop into muffin cups or muffin trays. I use silicon muffin cup (they're brilliant).
6. Bake for 20-25minutes till golden brown, or when you poke the middle of muffin with knife they come out clean.
7. You can decorate muffin with glazed banana.

I'm enjoying my muffins with friends on lovely Sunday morning.


I also took some pictures of my early flowering spring bulbs. I'm intrigued whether I could produce saffron from the stamen of my lovely crocuses. :-)

White and lilac crocus

Snowdrop

Iris reticulata

Purple Crocus

Let it snow

BBC weather forecast says it will snow 6am today. I don't like cold weather but somehow if it's with snow I love it. My idea of winter will be having lots of snow. Will there be enough snow for great snowball fights? I doubt :-)
To my disapointment it didn't snow at 6am. Perching on my bedroom window like a little kid anticipating, hoping it will snow. Well, well.....
At around 830am the snow came after all. I even phoned my friend "it's snowing". Bracing the almost freezing temperature, I ventured outside to take pics of the first snow this winter. The feelings just like the lyrics in "Sound of Music-these are a few of my favorite things -Snowflakes that stays on my nose and eyelashes". Alright, not too much snow but worth having after all:-).
Having enjoyed the little moment of whitish Sunday morning, I decided to bake blueberry muffins. What an enjoyment to sit in my conservatory and enjoying Sunday morning breakfast of blueberry muffins and English tea. Hmnnnn.................

Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients (make 10-12 standard size muffins)

• 280g plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 240ml milk
• 90ml vegetable oil or 85g melted butter
• 170g fresh blueberry
• Muffin cases and muffin tins
  

1. Prepare muffin tins. Preheat oven to 190C.
2. In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder. Add sugar and salt into the bowl.
3. In another bowl beat egg with a fork. Stir in milk followed by oil/butter.
4. Pour all wet ingredient into the flour. Mixed well, make sure no dry granules of flour formed.
   
5. Gently fold in the blueberry into the mixture.
6. Spoon into muffin cups and bake for 20-25mins.
7. Bake till the tops are lightly brown or use a fork to poke through the muffins, if it comes out clean, it is ready. Remove from oven.

Served with tea or a cup of hot chocolate as a morning breakfast or as afternoon tea time snack. Enjoy :-)