Banana & Apricot Compote Muffins

Banana & apricot compote muffin ingredients

The bananas above needed using up so I whipped together another recipe for muffins where the sugar was replaced with a Smy Goodness compote, in this case Smy Goodness apricots compote. The compote adds moistness and flavour to the muffins without them being overly sweet.

Banana  & Apricot Compote Muffins Recipe

Ingredients: 

• 100g organic spelt flour
• 100g organic plain flour  
• 100g organic butter
• 275ml apricot compote (or any flavour jam/compote) 
• 2 medium ripe bananas
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp organic vanilla

Instructions  : 

1. preheat the oven  to 210°C and lightly grease a muffin tray.
2. Mix and blend the butter, compote, bananas, egg and vanilla. 
3. Sift and flours and baking powder together.
4. Fold the sifted flour and baking powder into the blended wet ingredients a bit at a time until completely blended together.
5. Add a heaped tablespoon of the mixture into cases or muffin tray and then go back and add a bit of the mixture to each muffin case or tray until they are as equal as possible. The recipe will make 12-14 muffins. 

Sifted spelt and plain flour and baking powder

Banana, butter, apricot compote, vanilla and egg

Combined wet ingredients

Mixture ready for muffin cases

Beetroot & Black Carrot Cake with Nutty Six-Pepper Jelly Ice Cream

This is the Beetroot and black carrot cake served with homemade vanilla ice cream with mixed nuts roasted in six-pepper jelly with sea salt and demerara sugar and topped with candied black carrots.

It was such an enjoyable cake to make from start to finish and it finished by being one of the best cakes that I have ever made. It was put together in my favourite way to cook; I was inspired by a recipe that I had eaten, a seasonal ingredient obsession, something catching my eye, adding in an old favourite and a bit of a challenge. I was making a pudding to follow an amazing meal prepared by the incredible Frank About Food which is a pretty hard act to follow so I was looking to creating something a bit special. My cousin Sharon's courgette cake acted as my inspiration as it's delicious and I needed something totally chocolate free. I went to Swiss Cottage Green Grocers and spotted some black carrots that I thought I would want in my cake I was pre-building in my head. I'm obsessed with beetroot so I thought that would add some more natural sweetness and help with moisture. It ended up being such a light, flavourful, moist cake which went really well with the ice cream and all the different textures, with the ocassional salt and bitter tones from the sea salt and candied black carrots respectively.

Donuts

These were some of my first attempts ever at making donuts. About half of them were either overdone or undercooked due to my nerves with regulating the temperature of the oil. I filled them with black cherry and black pepper compote, strawberry and balsamic jam and some lemon curd. They were delicious.

Meringues

Any excuse to make meringue. They also conveniently make great little holders for Smy Goodness preserves and more. Clockwise from top left are:

• Lemon curd with candied lemon peel, cream and fresh raspberries
• Fresh mango circles marinated in Seville orange marmalade and cardamom topped with toasted pistachios and cream
• Black cherry & black pepper compote with almonds and cream
• Strawberry & balsamic vinegar compote with almonds, fresh strawberrries and cream
• Passionfruit jam topped with toasted macadamia nuts and cream.

I love eating and making meringues all year round including boozy Christmas-y toppings like winter berries stewed in cherry brandy made in the summer. The meringues can be made as individual servings, as large centre pieces or as bite size portions with different toppings.