in the midst

Banana bread is so wonderful. Fluffy and banana-y, with the addition of walnuts and raisins, maybe a splash of rum. Yum. I love it. This time I made it in my mini bundt pan, and came out with six adorable mini bundt banana bread cakes.

Half a dozen mini bundt cakes.

Could you believe that bundt isn’t built into the dictionary in Firefox? Gosh, what has the world come to? Anyway, I thought it would add to the cuteness if I sliced up one of them like one would slice the normal size bundt cakes. So here is the outcome. Adorable, no? Or perhaps, I’m just one of those odd foodies. You can see the run soaked raisins in the cross section, and the fluffiness, and wonderful colour.

Mini bundt cakey goodness.

I feel like this post is lacking. So I have for you today, more fruit! I can here the shocked gasps already. What can I say? I love fruit. I have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast every day, so there’s always the opportunity for it to turnout beautifully and thus I want to take a photo.

Today I have for you a gala apple, green grapes, and pineapple slices.

As a side note, the recipe for the banana bread came from the book How to be a Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson. I altered it slightly to suit what is in my pantry and dietary preference.

Banana Bread

(this recipe calls for using a 9 x 5 loaf pan, I used the mini bundt pan with no complications)

scant 1/2 cup raisins (original called for golden raisins)
3 ounces dark rum (or bourbon)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (10 ounces) whole wheat bread flour (original called for all purpose white flour)
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup natural cane sugar
2 large eggs
4 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put the raisins and rum in a smallish saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover, and leave for at least an hour to allow the raisins to absorb as much liquid as possible. Then drain.
Preheat the oven to 325°F and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium-sized bowl and combine well. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, stir in the walnuts, drained raisins, and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Scrape into the loaf pan (or as I did, use a spring loaded ice cream scoop for the mini bundts) and bake in the middle of the oven for 1-1 1/4 hours (I cut the time to 40-50 minutes). When it’s ready, an inserted toothpick should come out cleanish. Leave in the panuntil cool to the touch, and then turn out onto a rack.

Makes 8-10 slices, or 6-10 mini bunt cakes. (I over filled my pan this time, next time I imagine to get 8-10 out of it.)

I need a new title for this, before it gets old and overexploited. Oh well. One thinly sliced granny smith apple; one cara cara navel orange (this is my favourite kind of orange, it totally wins for flavour and beauty); a nice bit of pineapple, in chunks; a quarter meyer lemon, cut into tiny wedges; and a quarter lime, minced.

Bright, colourful, beautiful, delicious. Though, the apple was too sweet.

I minced the lime in order to intersperse the strong flavour, rather than concentrate it, since concentrated it would be really overpowering I think. I liked the outcome, though I should have sliced the apple thicker.

Yup. I’m pretty certain that this blog belongs in the category known as *food blogs* for obvious reasons. I feel like it’s the only topic I can cover without being, well, overly boring. There will be an occasional non-food related post but rest assured, most of the posts will be food related. I hope that it will be interesting.

There are oranges, and then there are blood oranges.

I like blood oranges. A lot. Aside from the colour, blood oranges are less sweet/more tart than other oranges, or at least that is what I’ve gathered. They’re very photogenic, especially when cut into wonderful pentagon shaped slices. By slicing them this way, I think it shows off their beauty much more clearly than wedges. And by cutting the skin off, I avoid the pith that is always left on the inner fruit. It tastes rather horrible, and is unsightly, for that matter. Best to do away with it altogether.

As a side note, Wordpress is currently being rather uncooperative to me. So if something looks funky or a link goes off to nowhere, it means that I have fuddled up this system and it will be back shortly (I hope shortly). Also, as I get (re)acquainted with php, I will definitely be making some changes to this theme, or perhaps I will start anew with a different theme. But for now this will have to do. As for these posts, I’m complaining here.. The text editor built into Wordpress is pretty rubbish. Since I have a decent understanding of html (from coding this blog’s mother site, Sphiorx.net) I will either end up editing the code manually, like I am now, or I will use notepad which is nifty for html coding. I am rambling now, best get used to it if you’re going to continue reading this blog.

Banana, pineapple,mango, blueberries, plus soy yoghurt and ground flax seeds. The perfect breakfast. I was energised for my Yoga session and shopping for lemon meringue pie ingredients. I will be posting about them shortly.

Yum.

Last Friday I made pizza dough, it was light and fluffy yet still crisp. Extremely vague recipe at the end of this post. Baking on a baking stone make a big difference. We had one on the stone and one on a plain baking sheet. The one on a baking sheet had a chewy crust. This one didn’t.

Fresh out of the oven.

Pizza Dough
4½ cups unbleached high-gluten, bread, or all-purpose flour ( I used 2¼ cups whole wheat bread flour, 2¼ cups all-purpose flour)
1¾ teaspoons salt
1 packet instant yeast (8 grams/.28 ounces)
¼ cup olive oil
1¾ cups warm water

Mix dry ingredients together, and wet ingredients, separately. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. mix until a clumping dough is formed. Knead dough for five minutes. Allow to rise for an hour. Push down dough before spreading into pizza shape. Add topping ingredients. Place on a round baking stone and bake at 450° Fahrenheit until browned and crisp.
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I made this recipe one time, so don’t hold a grudge if it doesn’t work out for you… Bake at your own risk.

edit: So I realised that I left out a very important part of my recipe. It would be a good idea to put the topping ingredients on the dough before baking.