Banana Bread For Beetle

I'm sure you're reading the title of this post and you're wondering 'has she finally gone mad?'. Let me put you out of your misery. I'm a member of an online forum. On this forum, we're like sisters. We have a common goal, and we are very supportive of each other. We pray together, cry together, and laugh together.

Like most online forums, there's the shield of anonymity. We are known by our user names. One such user is 'Beetle'. She asked me to make this, and to blog about it. So, without much ado, this is Banana Bread.
Note: I made this with coconut milk, you can make it with ordinary milk; I just like the hint of coconut. If you make it without coconut milk, you can leave out the coconut flavouring as well.

Ingredients

1/2 cup, melted butter
4 ripe bananas (the more ripe, the better. Overripe is perfect!)
1 cup, white sugar
1 3/4 cups, all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon, baking soda
1/2 teaspoon, salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup, coconut milk
2 teaspoons, coconut flavouring
1/2 cup, peanuts (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease one 9x5 inch loaf pan.
Mash the bananas with the milk. Add the eggs, sugar and oil. Mix well. Add the flavouring.
In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture and stir well. Fold in the peanuts.
Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Enjoy!

If I can, you can,

Deema

Mango Cupcakes

O, Mango! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

a) Raw
b) In pies and crumbles
c) In pudding and smoothies
d) In cupcakes!

In my search for different ways to use up the mangoes I have (which are abundantly available here in Nigeria at the moment), I came across recipes for mango cakes. To my disappointment, however, after trying two or three of the recipes that called for mango purée, I found that the mango flavour wasn't at intense as I would have liked. There would just be hints of mango flavour.

So I set out to remedy that. I experimented with this recipe, and it worked fabulously! When you bite into these cupcakes, you get a full blast of mango in your mouth; a mind-blowing combination of sweet and tart. These are delicious.

Warning: These cupcakes are for mango freaks, like me!

Yield- 24 mini cupcakes

Ingredients
1 3/4 cup, flour
3/4 teaspoon, baking powder
3/4 teaspoon, salt
2 eggs
1 cup,sugar
3/4 cup, olive oil
2 cups, chopped mango
3/4 cup, water

Method
Preheat the oven to 350 F
Sift all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for 2 minutes on medium high.
Slowly add in the sugar, whisk till mixture is thick and pale.
At this point, I like to revert to my wooden spoon, because it's very easy to over mix batter with a mixer. The wooden spoon gives me more control.
Alternately mix in the flour and oil, in batches, starting and ending with the flour.
Add the water, mix.
Fold in the mango.
Pour into cupcake pans, and bake for 12 minutes.

If I can, you can,

Deema.