Banana Bread

I walked through the door yesterday, having had a few days away on a business trip, to find a fruit bowl full of bananas, many of which were looking very much past their best. Although not my first priority - that went to having a power nap having had 3 hours sleep prior to travelling for ten hours in hot and sticky weather - I decided that the best solution for some of the riper fruit was to make banana bread and so that is what I did last night.

I found myself in a similar banana situation at Christmas when I managed to order twice the quantity I needed and only had half the people around to eat them. When I asked my Mum for suggestions as to what to do with the surplus she had suggested banana bread, not least because it freezes well. The advantage of the freezing bit is that you don't just end up eating a load of cake in place of a load of mushy bananas.

Anyway, this great suggestion had clearly stuck with me (well, Mums often know best) and so I dug out my 'usual' recipe, which happens to be the BBC Food Gluten-free Banana Bread one.

It calls for cherries but I only had a few of the glace variety so used these instead.  I also recalled reading that 'most chefs agree' that cutting up to a third of the sugar in a cake has no impact on the flavour, it may just make the cake a little less moist. With all that mashed banana I thought I may be fairly safe on the dryness front so cut the suggested 110g caster sugar to 85g.

With the mixture safely in the tin, the oven still warming and three more rather dark looking bananas I decided to quickly whip up a second loaf. This time I replaced the cherries with some chopped mixed peel and kept the sugar content to 85g.

I had heated the oven to the suggested 180C and set the timer for 1 hour 20 minutes before going to cool off in the garden. I'm not sure if I should have set the oven to a slightly lower temperature because it was on a fan setting or if the lower sugar content meant the cakes cooked a little quicker but I sort of wish I'd taken them out about 5-10 minutes earlier. However, no one here is complaining.  The cherry one was a little less brown so that has gone in the freezer and the citrus one is already proving very popular.

As for the lower sugar content, I can honestly say I think it's perfectly sweet enough and think I'll opt to add less sugar to all my bakes from now on.

Mind you, having done all that there are still about ten nice yellow bananas in the fruit bowl so it'll be bananas chopped onto some sort of cereal for breakfast for the household a few days yet. Unless, of course, my Mum has any other good ideas...?

Focusing on the journey rather than the destination

I can't quite believe June is here already. In part, I began this blog to make myself take time out from work and other responsibilities and do something creative. The blogging isn't the creative bit, it's having something I have made. And to have made something to blog about I must have taken time out to make it. Simple, right? Alas, I feel that 2018 hasn't been the most creative year to date. In fact, it has been pretty stressful.

In an attempt to take time out and have something to blog about I decided to give myself a bit of a break today. I made a conscious decision to put aside the 'to do' list. Instead I put the parasol up in the garden and got out my bits and pieces.

Armed with a mug of coffee and the sound of birdsong it couldn't have been any better. Gradually, as the heat increased, the birds quietened and the noise of the city took over. Really it was just background noise, but to help keep the background noise of my own thoughts at bay I reached for a pair of headphones and the reassuring voice of Stephen Fry. I'm not sure I can imagine anything more relaxing.

Anyway, with about a week to go before I head off on holiday I decided I should make good on a promise I made myself over a year ago - to make some felt pouches to transport jewellery. I first made some as Mother's Day gifts last year and so quickly referred back to the post I made then to jog my memory.

Sorting through the scraps of felt it turned out that I didn't have many pieces big enough so the colour palate was fairly limited but am very pleased with the result. They may not be earth-shatteringly original or hugely creative but this very much feels like a situation where the journey is more important than the destination. And when so many of us are rushing around from one thing to the next it is no wonder that we often end up feeling frazzled and frustrated.

Now I just have to decide what to pack inside them to take away. However, that can wait until next weekend since I am determined to make the most of my now very relaxed state. I really should do this more often...