If there’s one thing I love it’s a good project. So when we came up with the idea of buying a house in Spain before Christmas, I leaped to my ‘get up and go, let’s make it happen’ action station. I rarely put much thought into what compromise these things can create. The opportunity to ping open an excel spreadsheet and make some action plans makes me go weak at the knees.
We have been very fortunate. We were lucky in the search and fell for a belter pretty early on. Once secured, I was Pinterest board ready and fully charged to bring the ideas to fruition.
Now either I am slowing down, or the projects are getting bigger. I am guessing the truth as always lies somewhere in the middle. However, as we’ve been working to bring the house to life, my children suddenly seem to demand more in the day yet want to go to bed later, school seems to be closing for more saints, training and bank holidays, and I swear someone’s shortening the number of days we’ve got each month.
Strangely as I’ve looked down at my perpetual to do’s, I’ve also been saying YES to anything new thrown at me. I have some innate desire to be wonderwoman, wonderfriend, wonderwife and wondermum. Like lots of people I know, I say yes to so many things that inevitably I trip up and feel far from amazing at any of these super hero roles. So needless to say it’s been fairly hectic this past few months. The fantastic news is that we’re now the privileged owners of a beautiful sunny home, a place I know in my heart will house masses of joy, relief and laughter over the years to come.
It’s also an epic place to bake and cook. The kitchen is a happy place to work. I love nothing more than pouring myself a cold glass of Verdejo, putting on the radio and pottering around.
So it’s a real shame that I’ve run out of the extra energy needed to write up and snap the interesting things I have been making. Sometimes it really isn’t even about time, it’s about finding that final bit of space in your emotional vault to create good energy for just one more thing in a given week. I’ve been all out of the skills needed to clear away the space recently.
My lovely little blog project has been residing in the unfinished business box. It’s time to dust it down and throw in some love. I want to get to a point of pride before I walk away from this one, making sure I’ve featured enough varied recipes so that I can say this does fairly reflect the food of our O’Shaughnessy time. I’ve missed the thinking process, the snapping and I’ve really missed just writing for fun.
So let’s go. Back to brief.
I started this blog, probably like many others, to create a compilation of the food we love, the tastes of our lives at this very moment. I am going to open up again with my children’s favourite banana muffins. I make these on a Saturday morning or anytime I know we’ve got people for brunch or breakfast. They’re not clean, paleo, sugar or fat free, which is potentially why the kids want them so much! I’m starting with these, because they’re an honest reflection of things I do to give my children balance. I don’t want them to resent the food we eat, so here’s one in honour of ‘a little bit of what you fancy does you good’.
Brilliant banana muffins
The picture doesn’t do these crowd pleasers the justice they deserve. These soft sweet muffins have little chunks of fudge and chocolate in the middle. They’re easy to make and quick to cook.
For 12 decent sized muffins, you need:
- 250g self-raising flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 50g fudge chopped into small pieces
- 50g milk chocolate chips (or exclude fudge or chocolate if you prefer)
- 75g butter
- 125ml milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 2 medium ripe bananas
- 2 medium eggs
- 2 tablespoons of runny honey
Here’s how:
- Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees celsius or 375 degrees fahrenheit and put paper muffin cases into a muffin tin.
- Pop the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl, adding the fudge/chocolate and sugar.
- Gently melt the butter in a saucepan, remove from the heat to add the milk and vanilla essence.
- Mash the bananas in a bowl.
- Beat the eggs in another bowl.
- Add the eggs and bananas to the first big bowl of flour, stirring everything together with a wooden spoon. It will be quite a lumpy mixture, but that’s totally fine.
- Spoon in equal measures to your muffin cases then bake for about 15/20 minutes.
- Once firm and well risen, use a skewer to test that the mixture inside is cooked. Once out of the oven, leave them to cool in the tray for a further five minutes, brushing the tops with honey while still warm.
Next up – grown up food I promise xx
Season with Love 