Chocolate Chip Banana Pancakes with Caramel and Vanilla Mascarpone

I’m not really a pancake person.

My breakfast usually consists of a big bowl of porridge, with a sliced banana and maple syrup or toast/bagel/crumpet with tea.

Pancakes take a little bit too much effort in the morning and I usually find them a bit indulgent and filling (mind you, I do like to have them with a sliced banana and some squirty cream so maybe that’s why).

My usual recipe for pancakes isn’t even much of a recipe.  I crack an egg into a jug, add half a mug of milk, then enough plain flour to create a thickish batter.  Sugar is optional depending on who I’m making it for but I always add it for myself.

The idea of following a precise, written recipe for pancakes isn’t something that I would usually do, but coming upon this recipe just happened to coincide with me being in the rare mood for pancakes.  It also contained chocolate chips and bananas, a combination which I love, so I couldn’t resist.

All I can say about these are that they were absolutely delicious.  So moist, soft and fluffy inside, while having a very slight crunch on the outside.  These were perfect with the mascarpone and caramel topping, although they still make for a heavy and slightly indulgent breakfast in my opinion.  Moderate portions are the key here.

Chocolate Chip Banana Pancakes with Caramel and Vanilla Mascarpone

·         2 ripe bananas

·         2 eggs

·         200ml milk

·         150g self-raising flour

·         25g ground almonds

·         15ml/1tbsp caster sugar

·         Pinch salt

·         1tbsp chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate)

·         Butter/oil for frying

For the mascarpone topping:

·         250g mascarpone

·         1tsp vanilla bean paste

·         2-3 tbsp caramel

·         2 tbsp golden syrup

In a bowl, mash the bananas and beat in the eggs and 100ml milk.  Combine the flour, almonds, sugar and salt and mix into the bananas/egg mixture.

Mix in the remaining milk and the chocolate chips.

Place some butter in a frying pan and let it heat up on medium-low heat.  On low heat, add a dollop (about 3-4 tbsp) of batter into the middle of the melted butter.

Once you begin to see bubbles appearing on the top of the batter, flip it over and cook for about a minute more.  Use up all the batter.

To make the caramel mascarpone topping simply mix all the ingredients together in bowl.  If you find it too thick then just thin it with a little amount of milk.

Serve spoonfuls of the caramel mascarpone on top of the pancakes.

Chocolate, Honey and Peanut Butter Booster Bars

Or fancy Flapjacks, as my Dad calls them.  Funnily enough he loved these – I don’t think he noticed they contained chocolate, although the chocolate was hard to visually detect as I’ll explain below.

These were made for a trek our group took a couple of weekends ago.  It wasn’t a very strenuous trek, around eight kilometres, but the weather was extremely cold, and despite wearing Thinsulate gloves (which are apparently meant to keep you very warm while still being lightweight), everyone’s hands became virtually numb.  At least it didn’t snow (like the following day).

But anyway, my reason for making these was because I wanted to take snacks on the trek that we could easily munch on; something that would hold its shape well and wasn’t too sticky or messy.

After considering a few options I decided to go with making these booster bars (or flapjacks/granola bars) and a fat-free banana cake which looked like it had the texture and consistency to keep it firm and mess free on the trip.  Unfortunately this brazil nut and dark chocolate chip banana loaf cake got gobbled up before I could take some pictures of it and even the bars didn’t last too long.

This is in effect the second time I’m making these and I tweaked the recipe considerably, but only with good intentions as I wanted to reduce the sugar quantity and rely more on the honey to sweeten the mixture.  After all, some of the ingredients going into this concoction are just so good for you that I felt morally obliged to reduce the ‘baddies’ as much as I could.  But not to the detriment of taste.  That’s where common sense can kick in and you can just take a smaller portion.  Well, you can try to take a smaller portion.

This worked very well on the trip which was a pleasant surprise since when I made these for the first time I thought I made a pretty big error and ruined the whole batch.  You see, I mixed all the dry ingredients together and was melting the ‘wet’ ones, but the damned peanut butter had hardened up (as natural peanut butter is wont to do) and it was taking just ages trying to dissolve all the ingredients.

I became impatient and the minute the wet ingredients had all melted I quickly poured them onto the dry, not realising, silly girl that I am, that I had added the chopped chocolate to the dry ingredients too.  Now, it doesn’t take a genius to guess that the chocolate all melted from the heat of the hot wet ingredients.  It wasn’t the effect I was going for when I decided to add chocolate to the recipe.  I was thinking more along the lines of chocolate chips/chunks embedded in the honeyed oats, giving a sweet contrast to the nuts and seeds.

Well what I got was the chocolate melting to completely combine and become one with the hot wet mixture and there was no going back.  I baked it as it was and just hoped for the best the next day.  I reasoned that we would be so hungry and tired on the trek that we would just be grateful of getting any kind of sweet morsel to boost our metabolism.   

Well these sweet morsels scored highly with trekkers and non-trekkers alike that day and were just as much a hit with the folks at home.  The sweetness of the chocolate and honey combined is just difficult to describe and I completely love it.  I didn’t think I would, but the combination is rich, heady and decadent (not what I would usually describe flapjacks as).  The nuts and seeds impart the requisite texture and crunch and the whole works very well together.

My Dad said that these need to be made again.  No asking or requesting politely.  Just firmly stated.  So here they are again.

Chocolate, Honey and Peanut Butter Booster Bars

·         150g butter

·         150g natural organic peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)

·         100g light brown sugar

·         100g honey

·         50g golden syrup

·         1 lemon, zest only

·         300g Scottish oats

·         125g dark chocolate, 70%, chopped

·         75g almonds, coarsely chopped

·         75g brazil nuts, coarsely chopped

·         50g sesame seeds

·         50g pumpkin seeds

·         20g desiccated coconut

·         15g linseed (I used brown because that’s what I had but golden would be better)

Melt the butter, oil, peanut butter, brown sugar, honey and golden syrup in a pan over low heat.  Make sure all the ingredients are properly dissolved (my organic peanut butter can harden up sometimes) before taking off the heat.   Add the lemon zest and mix in.

Combine all the rest of the ingredients together in a large bowl and pour the hot mixture into it.  Using a stiff spatula or wooden spoon, mix until the wet ingredients are well combined into the dry ingredients and mixture looks uniform.

Pat the mixture evenly into a 8”x8” square tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 25 minutes.  Do not bake for over 30 minutes as this will make the flapjacks hard and crunchy.

The Best Sticky Toffee Pudding

Never has a cake been so well received by family than this one.  I always get a few moans and groans about how unhealthy my hobby is from family members but on this occasion I simply got praise on how amazing this cake was - people just couldn’t stop from going to get seconds (and thirds!).  This is the cake you oooh and aaah over after tasting rather than seeing.

My family do appreciate my cakes, but can become a little overwhelmed at the frequency with which I provide these high-fat high-sugar goods.  Consequently most have joined the gym or taken up either lifting weights, cycling or doing the hula hoop (the latter my little sister does for almost 2 hours a day which is impressive don’t you think?).  In a certain twisted way, my frequent baking has made my family healthier – or that’s what I like to think anyway!

This has to be the best STP recipe out there – I mean it can’t get more amazing than this.  The cake was very soft and indulgent with a lovely warm toffee taste from the dates.  The sauce was comfortly warming and sweet – only thing I would change next time is to completely omit the black treacle to make the sauce more purely toffee-like (or as my sister puts it, ‘more like Werthers Originals')

I adapted the recipe by adding in a mixture of spelt as well as self-raising flour, adding in about ¼ tsp of cinnamon as well as the mixed spice and using golden granulated instead of golden caster sugar (as I didn’t have any of the latter).  

I also used a completely different sauce recipe, the quantities of which I ‘guesstimated’ based on numerous other toffee sauce recipes.  What I realised immediately was that the sauce which came with this recipe just wouldn’t be enough – and I was right.  Using the quantities I did, the sauce was just enough for this cake (mind you we do dollop quite a large amount on top).

Stick Toffee Pudding (from here)

·         200g dates , stoned and chopped

·         250ml black tea

·         ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         85g unsalted butter, softened

·         175g golden granulated sugar

·         2 eggs

·         150g self-raising flour

·         25g spelt flour

·         1 tsp mixed spice

·         ¼ tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180C, prepare a square 8” cake tin.

Boil the dates in the tea for about 4 minutes to soften, then take off the heat and add in the bicarbonate of soda (it will fizz).

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy, then add in the eggs, beating well after each to fully incorporate.

Combine the flours, cinnamon and mixed spice together and add to the butter mixture.  Beat until just combined, then add in the date mixture and fold in well.

Pour into your prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until it passes the skewer test (be your own judge on this – everyone’s oven is different).

Sticky Toffee Sauce

·         200g light muscavado sugar

·         75g butter

·         350ml double cream

·         1 tbsp golden syrup

·         1 tbsp black treacle (optional)

Melt the sugar, butter and about 200ml of the cream in a pan over medium-low heat.

Allow to bubble until all the sugar has melted.  Add in the golden syrup and treacle and simmer for another 2 minutes.

Take off the heat and add in the rest of the cream.  Serve

Sticky Ginger Upside Down Persimmon Cake

I’ve been wanting to make a sticky ginger cake for a while now.  I like the warming effect of ginger in the colder months and always gravitate towards these ingredients in autumn/winter.  I think most people do.  

I scoured my cookbooks for the perfect recipe and settled on this one from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries.  This is my first book by this author and I’m really enjoying his style of writing and cooking.  I adapted the recipe by bumping up the cinnamon (naturally) from ½ a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon, omitting the sultanas and using buttermilk instead of milk.  I also wanted to make this into an upside down cake with persimmons (or sharon fruit as we call it in my family) as I believed the flavours of ginger and the fruit would go well together.   

I really don’t think the fruit added anything to the whole at all.  It just seemed to get lost and become completely irrelevant within the strong sweet taste of this ginger cake.  Or maybe I should have cut the slices a lot thicker so the fruit had more ‘presence’ (nobody noticed the fruit while eating until I actually pointed it out to them!).   

Next time I might try apples and cut them a lot thicker.

The recipe doesn’t use any fresh ginger but instead relies on ground and stem ginger, the latter of which I prefer over fresh ginger.  I feel the candied sweetness of stem ginger is just more appropriate in sweet baked goods.

The smell emanating from the syrup and sugar mixture was heavenly!  

I could seriously bathe in this stuff!  This is the smell you want to come home to after a long day at work or school – so warm, sweet and comforting.

Sticky Ginger Upside Down Persimmon Cake

·         250g self-raising flour

·         2 tsp ground ginger

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         Pinch of salt

·         200g golden syrup

·         2 tbsp syrup from stem ginger jar

·         125g butter

·         2-4 lumps stem ginger, diced finely

·         125g dark muscavado sugar

·         2 large eggs

·         250ml buttermilk

·         1 persimmon, sliced finely (or 2 persimmons and sliced slightly thicker so it gets noticed)

Preheat oven to 180C, prepare a 9” round cake tin by lining and greasing it.  Arrange the persimmon slices at the bottom in a roughly concentric pattern.

Combine the flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large mixing bowl.

Place the golden syrup, ginger syrup and butter on a medium-low heat to melt.  Add the diced stem ginger and sugar and let it bubble for about 1-2 minutes.

Mix the eggs and buttermilk together.  Remove the butter mix from the heat and pour into the flour mixture.  Stir until thoroughly combined, then add in the egg mixture.  The batter should be a fairly liquid consistency.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 40 minutes (checking after 30 minutes to see if it’s done).  If it passes the skewer test then it is done, otherwise give it another 10 minutes or so.

Next time I will try making this cake with spelt flour or a combination of spelt and plain as I think it will work very well.