Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Banana and Cranberry Muffins  Banana & cranberry muffins In recent weeks I have been particularly busy at work and yesterday (Saturday 23rd April) I allowed myself the indulgence of going around in my dressing gown all morning. I felt a little guilty about not making much progress on my list of soup and baking recipes and so was easily prompted by the sight of three blackening bananas into baking muffins. In addition some dried cranberries were approaching their "best before" date and I decided to substitute them for the raisins mentioned in the Martha Day recipe. Brown sugar and sunflower oil helped me to feel they weren't too unhealthy. I had one today on return from the gym and a 10k cycle with the spouse.  Benson Revisited Another indulgence I'm allowing myself is a re-reading of E F Benson's Secret Lives, which I first bought and read in March 1985. And I have just this minute discovered that it was dramatised for radio by the BBC ! Why did no ...

Sometimes Things Go Pear-Shaped As you know, I enjoy baking and usually things turn out well. Last month (16th March) things went pear-shaped when I attempted to make what should have been a delicious, caramel-flooded sticky pear and ginger cake from my Norfolk cookbook . I carefully weighed the ingredients, I followed the instructions to a T so I'm not sure what caused the problem. First of all, you have to make caramel which will sit in the bottom of the baking tin. Unsalted butter was specified for the cake batter but not for the caramel. As I was short of unsalted butter, I used salted butter for the caramel. The other ingredient was soft dark brown sugar. I melted the two ingredients together and stirred but the mixture seemed too thick and grainy, and it was too salty.  Once the caramel had set in the baking tin, I placed pear halves over it before getting on with the batter. This contained chopped pears, chopped crystallised ginger and ground ginger. I checked the oven ...