Quick and Easy Banana Bread Muffins

Sunday morning and you’d really like to have something handy for a nice brekkie. But all I could find was 4 really brown bananas, a bit of milk and a crusty bit of bread. Which is the most useful? The bananas. My cupboards on the other hand are full of everything I need for baking, but notibly by fridge is lacking in butter – so I had to wing it a little and use vegetable oil for the muffins.

However, don’t worry. Vegetable oil is often used in muffins and loafs; commonly in banana breads, carrot cakes and chocolate sponges. The vegetable oil in comparison to butter makes the final consistency very bouncy and moist and it makes a lovely muffin!

I popped 2 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder in to a bowl. Sieve the flour if you so wish, to avoid lumps. In a seperate bowl mash the 4 bananas. Add 2 eggs and 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil. Finally add a teaspoon of vanilla essence, or if you have it the seeds from the inside of half a vanilla pod.

In small amounts add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring well to avoid those icky lumpy flour bits. When the mixture is ready, grab a well lined muffin tin, or I just whacked some cupcake cases in to a muffin tin and fill them up.

The muffins will rise to you’ll have to guesstimate how much you should fill them. I’ve always been happier under filling rather than over filling, because muffin all over the oven isn’t ideal.

Serve with a cup of coffee and the sunday paper. Nom.

Cous Cous and Halloumi Nom

It’s coming up to exam time again and simple easy and quick food is the best thing. Not to mention that sometimes fridges aren’t gloriously filled with fresh delicious food, but rather a random collection of thins you’ve forgotten about.

some springonions (which needed a lot of dry leafy bits removed)

some kind of wrinkly tomatoes

a packet of halloumi

some salsa verde I had from last week

an orange (I used the rind and ate the rest!)

a bottle of pesto (that is in the fridge for nights when you’re tired and just need a bowel of easy pasta.

I also found two chicken drumsticks in the freezer that were now defrosted. I left them in the bag they came in, chucked in a teaspoon of ground cumin, ground coriander and some garam masala and then two tablespoons of natural yoghurt. Leave the drumsticks to marinade for as long as you have and them pop them on some tin foil in the oven at 180 degrees celcius.

I took 200g of cous cous and popped it in to a frying pan with water. The heat keeps the water boiling and the cous cous cooks extra quick. In another pan I heated the chopped springonions, with halfed baby tomatoes and a tablespoon of red pesto. I then poured that on to the now cooked cous cous and stirred it in.

I didn’t clean the pan because I like to keep the flavours there and use them again (as long as nothing burns) and threw on well-peppered roughly chopped halloumi. Fry it until the edges are nice and brown and the cheese is beginning to melt in parts. (I often cook cous cous in stock, but didn’t here because the halloumi is so salty anyway!)

I grabbed some rind from an orange and added it to my salsa verde for an extra nom. A drumstick to munch on the side, if you’re not a veggie.

Threw it all on a plate and nom. Done.

Easy student fridge raiding meal.

Student’s Simple Homemade Burritos

For some reason the other half is mad in to burritos these days. Burritos can now be found all over the place and are a nom ready to eat, quick, filling and significantly healthier option when it comes to fast food.

Here we literally were scrambling through the fridge and cupboards looking for a Saturday night nom.

1 can of kidney beans

Some left over chicken/turkey/beef

Salsa

Sour Cream

Jalapenos

Salad

Rice

Cheese

Tortillas

And anything else you like on your burritos, or that you have handy in the cupboard.

We only had the small tortillas handy so we had two little burritos each. Quickly heat the tortilla on a pan, less than a minute on either side.

Previously we took a can of already cooked kidney beans, washed and drained them, mashed them in a bowl, seasoned them and refried them. Your left with a tasty bean paste mash that you then spread first on the tortilla wrap. Follow it up with the chicken, your sauces, the sour cream, some rice, cheese and jalapenos (or whatever is your fancy on a burrito) and wrap.

Scrumptious student cupboard surprises!