Bananas and a Book

I've blogged before about my dislike of food waste and where it stems from. I'm glad to say that we don't waste much in our house, even less now that Mr P takes left over portions of dinner into work for lunch. But for some reason most weeks we have bananas in the fruit bowl that really are past their best.

I have tried not buying as many bananas each week, but then (you know what's coming......) we run out!
So I keep buying the bananas and when we do have some left, past their best, at the end if the week I make banana bread.
Having the time to bake and the bananas being overripe don't always coincide, so, when this happens I put the bananas in the freezer until I do have the time.
Then when I'm ready I simply get them out of the freezer, defrost them and make my usual banana and chocolate chip bread. I'm always surprised at how quickly they defrost.

Defrosting doesn't take long

When they're defrosted they are a little on the slimy side but they're perfect for baking (or smoothies, although I don't defrost them fully as I like my smoothies ice cold)

When M volunteered  to make the tea break cakes for rehearsals last week she knew straight away which recipe she wanted to use from her favourite cook book. A beautiful cook book aimed at children, but with some really nice recipes.

I love this book. Not just because the instructions are clear enough, that I know M could make any of the recipes unaided and get a good result, or that it is full of delicious recipes with beautiful photographs, but because it explains the basics of baking. So many children I meet through work don't know what the basic terms of cooking mean. The difference between 'mix', 'fold' or 'beat' for example, and I can guarantee that if I did baking with those children hardly any would know what the term 'cream together' means, which is quite sad.
This book however, talks about kitchen hygiene, creaming, folding, lining a tin, testing with a skewer and making pastry. Almost every page has an idea for a variation of that recipe and there are 'helpful hint', 'did you know?' and 'food fact' information boxes. All very useful and informative.

I've made several of the recipes from this book without the help of the children, as they really are very good. Today I decided a banana bread was in order, but with no chocolate in the house, needed a new recipe and remembered the one I'd seen in M's book.

So today with the help of L, I made a banana and pineapple cake. I strayed from the recipe slightly mainly due to what I had in the cupboard.
The recipe uses a mix of white and wholemeal flour, I only had white. It also uses dried pineapple but says to soak in water if very dry. I didn't have dried pineapple so used tinned and removed excess juice with some kitchen towel. Lastly the recipe sprinkles chopped walnuts on the top, but R doesn't like nuts so I used a sprinkling of brown sugar.

It's very moist and quite heavy, but not in a bad way. More of a banana bread than a cake. I really liked the juicy little pieces of pineapple dotted through each slice.

It went very nicely with a cup of tea......

As did the cakes M made for tea break last night

Lilac, pink and blue cupcakes. SOLD OUT!