Cooking

Foraged Blackberry and Pear Pie

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A.k.a. Purple Pear Pie!

We noticed some blackberries over the fence this morning as we played in the garden with our giant bubbles (you can find the recipe, including secret ingredient, and how to make giant bubbles wands here).
I suggested to Little E that we take a wander down the foot path and see if we could find enough blackberries for a sweet treat! She asked if we could make blackberry pie, this really surprised me as she had never been one for fruit pie or crumble puddings. So as any mother keen to have her child try new things would, I took her foraging for blackberries.

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Banana and Left Over Easter Muffins

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Everyone ends up with left over Easter egg chocolate right? Okay, maybe not everyone, but we always seem to end up with more Easter eggs than we want to eat, especially the cheaper chocolate that doesn’t always appeal so much.

Well combine that with our habit of having over ripe bananas at the end of the week and you get banana and chocolate chip muffins!

Banana and Chocolate Easter MuffinsMuffins are the easiest sweet treat to make, I really don’t enjoy mixing up cake mix, so often use the mixer, but that means more washing up. The great thing about muffins is the ingredients only need barely combining, so it’s a 30second easy job with a spoon.

Equipment:

  • Scale
  • Large mixing bowl
  • Small bowl or jug
  • Large jug
  • Table spoon
  • Fork
  • A cupcake/yorkshire pudding tin with 12 spaces
  • 12 muffin cases (big cases, not the small cup cake cases of our youth, muffins rise – a lot!)

Ingredients (makes 12):

  • 280g/10 oz of plain white flour
  • 1 tbsp of baking power
  • 115g/4 oz caster sugar
  • 2 medium-large bananas
  • 100mls of milk
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 6 tbsp oil or 85g /3 oz of butter melted and cooled (I use sunflower or vegetable oil)
  • 100g/ 3.5 oz (or about 1 kids size Easter egg) of chocolate broken into small pieces
  • pinch of salt if desired (I never bother)

If you don’t have a sweet tooth and fancy these as breakfast muffins you can cut the sugar to 3oz.

Method:

  1. Pre heat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6, or 180C for a fan assisted oven.
  2. Put 12 paper muffin cases in the tray or grease a muffin tray and put the mixture straight in if you prefer.
  3. Using a large bowl add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, stir together. (I place the bowl on the scales, tare the scales, and add the ingredients directly to save washing up.)
  4. Add the chocolate chunks to the bowl and stir in.
  5. Mash the bananas in a bowl, measure and add the milk to make a puree, some lumps add a nice texture.
  6. Beat the eggs in the jug and measure the oil. Add the banana puree to the jug, mix together.
  7. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the liquid ingredients.
  8. Stir until just combine, do not over mix it! Small floury lumps are fine.
  9. Immediately spoon the mixture into the muffin tin. Do not leave the mixture standing around, it must be baked straight away or they will flop!
  10. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 15-20mins, until well risen and golden. A knife will come out slightly sticky.
  11. Serve warm after 5mins or leave to cool.

Yumm!