COOKBOOKS GALORE

 I love muffins, preferring them to cupcakes, as am not keen on all the cupcake topping. The usual over ripe were bananas left in the bowl, so looked for something a bit different to make with them. The recipe is adapted from one on the easypeasylemonsqueezy blog, but that one uses butter and I prefer using oil.  Preheat oven 180C   Grease a 12 hole muffin tin or use muffin cases.  Muffin cases vary in size. Mine from Lakeland are bigger than the ones from the supermarket. I made 8 big muffins, but you could make 12 with the smaller cases. You need: 6 tbspn vegetable oil or 90g melted cooked butter,  3 ripe bananas, 1/2 tspn vanilla extract, 2 eggs, 125g soft brown sugar, 250g sr flour, 1 level tspn baking powder,  1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda and a packet of chocolate chips In a large bowl put the oil, bananas, vanilla and eggs and whisk together. Add the rest of the ingredients except the chocolate chips and mix together. Don’t overmix! Add the chocolate, keeping a few back to put on

 My neighbour brought me a bag of rhubarb from a friend,so I decided to make my Mum’s rhubarb cake. The rhubarb is on the top of the cake.  150g butter or soft margarine, 115g soft light brown sugar, 1/2tspn vanilla extract, 2 beaten eggs, 150g sr flour, 1/2 tspn baking powder, 50g ground almonds, 1 tspn ground ginger, 1-2 tbsps milk,  360g rhubarb cut into 2  cm chunks and 3 tbspn Demerara sugar Preheat Oven 180C/gas4/350F Line a 20cm springform tin with parchment paper Cream fat and brown sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs. Stir flour, almonds, ginger and baking powder together then fold into the mixture with enough milk to give soft dropping mix.  Spoon into tin, level the surface and scatter the rhubarb over the top. Sprinkle with the Demerara sugar. Bake for 45 mins - 1 hour till skewer comes out cleanly. Cool in the tin. I didn’t have Demerara sugar so used soft dark brown. The rhubarb still has a good tang to it and isn’t too sweet. I had a slice with ice cream. It’s quite a soft c