Chocolate Banana Bread

This is not a recipe I created from scratch, rather I adapted slightly a recipe in Pippa Kendrick's "Free From food for Family and Friends" book. I highly recommend it, it's given me lots of new ideas!

This is nut free, gluten free, vegan, soya free, yeast free and really, really tasty. I've made it twice now and it works best in the food processor rather than my Kenwood mixer, since the batter needs to be quite smooth.

Afternoon Tea

An old one but a good one... these Banana Muffins are a firm favourite of ours!

Dairy free, Gluten free, Soya Free

Banana Oaties

I have had this recipe sitting around for MONTHS and have finally got round to making it! It's so quick and simple, the cookies can be frozen (if they are not eaten straight away!) and its a flexible recipe with room for changing to suit your tastes/needs.

There are few ingredients, and it is dairy free, soya free, wheat free, gluten free, egg free - most major allergens free AND sugar free. It's vegan, MEWS safe, you name it, so I can see it becoming one of our staples.

Unfortunately it contains nuts, but I imagine rice protein might work instead? Or polenta?

There are only TWO left to take a photo of, the rest disappeared when my back was turned....

Ingredients

• 3 RIPE mashed bananas
• 1/3 cup of apple sauce (I used 1 banana and apple Cow and Gate infant fruit pot)
• 2 cups gluten free oats 
• 1/4 cup almond milk (or your choice of substitute)
• 1/2cup raisins (or substitute for your favourite dried fruit or nuts if safe)
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• 1tsp cinnamon

Recently I treated myself to a set of measuring cups to facilitate easy conversion for cooking with Australian cup measurements. They are particularly useful for the Tiana coconut recipes too.

Mine are from TKMaxx which is a surprisingly good source of baking equipment!

Method

• Easy - mash the bananas
• Combine everything well (I use my Kenwood mixer for this)
• Spoon onto a baking sheet
• Bake at 180C/350F for 15 minutes!

Tip:- Best kept in the fridge for a couple of days, or the freezer if uneaten in that time. They are not hard biscuits but very soft - delicious warmed for a few seconds in the microwave.

Enjoy! 

Smoothies

In addition to our "Biscuit Bake-Off" the twins and I have been trying some new ideas as I try and hand over a little of the control over their diet.

My daughter is far more willing to experiment, and far less fussy than her twin brother. She had been reading about how to make smoothies in one of the cookbooks we have here and actually came to me unprompted with her version of the recipe.

To be honest, it's not necessarily a "recipe" because you can put pretty much anything into a blender and whizz it up. What interested me was her plan to try with and without banana, which she hates.

Ingredients

• Raspberries
• Cherries
• Grapes
• Blackberries (not the cheapest time of the year to be trying this!!!)
• orange juice

then the same again with banana added.

She did actually try both versions, but pronounced the second "pretty disgusting, too bananery". No surprise there then....

But what really interested both of us was how thick the one with banana became, and very quickly. It was a useful reminder that banana is an excellent alternative to other raising agents and makes a good thickener too!

Darcy's Banana Bread

This is named after a friend's little girl who is on a restricted diet so protein content really matters. It sounds complicated but I am assured it is actually very quick and easy!

MEWS free, corn free, nut free and delicious!

PREHEAT oven to 170C

Ingredients

• 350g peeled bananas (peeled weight)
• 180g-200g plain flour (rice and quinoa flour mixed works well with 140g-150g rice flour to 30g-40g quinoa flour)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1tsp salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar and white sugar mixed (if you convert this measurement remember different ingredients have different weights to cup values....)
• 1 tbsp water
• 1tsp xanthan gum
• 3tbsp oil plus any extra to grease a loaf tin
• splash of vanilla extract (I use the Madagascan vanilla extract from Lakeland, it's lovely!)
• 1tsp cinnamon (optional)

Optional nutritional supplements :-
2tsp calcium and vit D powder
5 scoops of Neocate
dash of apple juice if using the above and the acid helps the rise

Method

• Mash bananas in a large bowl
• Mix Sugar, water and oil and microwave/heat 30 seconds. CAREFUL IT WILL BE VERY HOT!!
• The oil will be sitting on top of the sugar so whisk through then whisk it into the bananas fast. (You could use a Kenwood type mixer instead)
• Add vanilla, salt to this "wet" bowl
• Mix everything else into the dry bowl and sift in to the wet bowl.
• Pour into a lined loaf tin, if you want a crunchy top then sprinkle some brown sugar over it before baking.
• Bake until a knife or cocktail stick comes out clean, allow to cool then cut in slices. 
• Freezes well.

IF YOU CAN USE EGGS THERE IS A BANANA MUFFIN/LOAF RECIPE HERE WHICH IS A GOOD ALTERNATIVE. I am looking forward to trying this myself - thanks Claire!

Cakes!

This is a general post about cakes, the birthday cake post I wrote some time ago is still valid, in so much as it works well, and the cake is still available. Tesco's chocolate version is even more yummy though!

It comes ready iced too, always a bonus! All our family love this moist, chocolatey cake.

There are lots of options now, it is definitely getting easier to find cake alternatives or ingredient alternatives. My children love decorating their own cakes and biscuits with icing pens too.


If you prefer a dry mix, I have tried two recently. The Hale and Hearty mix on the right (which is good but I prefer their brownie mix for taste)
and the Glebe Farm Mix which is fool proof, works every time and I would love to know why it is so much better than my own efforts when the ingredients are pretty much the same!

My friend Suzanne at "Free From for Kids" has a reliable stock of the Hale and Hearty mix, sometimes found in Sainsbury's and the Glebe Farm one is increasingly available at local outlets like farm shops etc. They make a blueberry muffin mix, carrot cake mix and pizza base mix which I have recently bought to try. Muffins were very successful!

Of course, you can use a regular sponge cake recipe (4oz/100g of flour, same of marge, same of caster sugar with 2 eggs) and substitute everything for free from ingredients which I do very successfully pretty frequently. Works fine with muffins and if you can tolerate banana they help with the rising for beautifully tall cupcakes and muffins.

There are lots of variations on this theme on the "Sweet Treats" page. There is a fantastic chart for alternatives to egg in cakes here too.

Happy Baking! 

Egg alternatives/substitutes

At the time this post was written, I was rather lax in investigating egg alternatives as we were not egg free. All that changed about six years ago and my daughter and I are now experienced #eggfree bakers! There is another post here with lots of easy alternatives. Free from baking should always be a little wetter than regular batters and mixes, it takes a bit of getting used to. It can be frustrating and the ingredients are not cheap (eg chia seeds) but the results can be really good - it's worth persevering. Free from sweet items in the supermarkets are all too often full of cheap fillers and a great deal of sugar (to hide the lack of flavour due to removal of proteins) so if you can possible bake your own, it's incredibly worthwhile.

A friend posted this chart elsewhere, it is an invaluable resource for those trying to exclude egg in cooking so I thought I would share it here.

Banana Muffins

These are scrummy and are gluten, dairy, soya and wheat free. They could be egg free if egg replacer is used and are an ideal recipe to use this as banana also helps as a raising agent.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 oz Pure Sunflower margarine
• 5oz caster sugar
• 3 eggs (medium to large)
• 4 bananas (mashed, unless you have a mixer then it will achieve this for you!)
• 8oz SR flour (I use Dove's Farm SR on substitutions page)
• 1 extra tsp baking powder (check ingredients)
• 1 tsp Xanthan Gum

Method

• Beat sugar and margarine until together
• Beat in eggs, then mashed bananas
• Add dry ingredients - flour, Xanthan gum, baking powder and combine fully.
• Spoon into cases and bake at 180 C for 20 minutes unless using muffin cases (larger) when 35 minutes is needed.