Blueberry and Banana Oaty Bites: Dairy Free, Egg Free, Soya Free, Vegan

In the eternal quest for bakes the whole family will enjoy, that meet the needs of my CMPA, egg allergic baby, I came across a recipe for a Banana, oat and chocolate munchy bar on Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb and ginger. Whilst that recipe looked very tasty it’s near impossible to get dairy and soya free chocolate, and what you can get is too expensive to use in cake (Booja Booja, I’m looking at you). I thought I’d adapt the original recipe to suit our needs allergy wise and make it a bit more suitable for a weaning treat.

This is a fabulously easy recipe that you could easily change up to suit your family’s tastes. It's much like an oaty version of a banana bread or a cakey version of a flapjack - not unlike my Porridge fingers for big people.

Blueberry and Banana Oaty Bites: Dairy Free, Egg Free, Soya Free, Vegan

Serves 12 (or 24 if all being used for babies)

2¼ cups Porridge Oats

½ tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

½ tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp Salt (just a pinch if using Kosher or sea salt)

1 tsp sweet mixed spice

3 overripe Bananas

1 pot Apple puree (the type for Babies) or ¼ cup of cooked down Bramleys

2 tsp Vanilla extract

¼ cup Maple syrup

½ cup Blueberries

Grease a 9”x9” Brownie pan, and line with a long strip, the width of the tin, and 3 times the length

Preheat the oven to 160ºC

Blitz the oats in a food processor until they are rough flour

Pour into a mixing bowl, add the Bicarb, Baking powder, Salt and sweet mixed spice. Give a quick mix to combine the dry ingredients.

Break the bananas into chunks and pop into the food processor, add the Maple Syrup, fruit pot and Vanilla. Blitz until smooth.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, add the Blueberries, and stir to combine.

Pour this into the prepared tin, smooth out the top, and bake for 20 minutes at 160ºC (Check at 15 mins)

When the top is golden and the bake feels firm to the touch, remove and leave to cool in the tin.

When cool, use the strip of baking paper to easily remove from the tin.

Slice into bars, this makes 12.

Enjoy with a cup of Tea, or if you are little, half a bar with a sippy cup of Oat milk.

These freeze beautifully - I halve the bars, and much like I do for pancakes separate them with little square of greaseproof paper before popping in a freezer bag. Then it's just a case of defrosting at room temperature. 

Goodbye to blueberry... muffins?

I know, I know, long time no post. Sadly there' s a huge difference in the time I have to write when working my notice and learning a new role. There's a huge difference in spare time all in and this evening I'm sitting writing with a practically bare fridge, and no intention of shopping until Friday (which is approximately the same time as I have a minute unaccounted for). It's all good and I'm really enjoying what I'm doing, but I'm going to have to ask regular readers to bear with me whilst I get into my stride.

There has been some cooking going on, here are my blueberry muffins - sadly without picture as they were inhaled greedily, their dense almondy-ness (it's a word) contrasting with the sharpness of the fresh fruit. I've also put together another courgette recipe for those gluts, this time a traditional fritter, with a spike of chilli.

I've also had the fortune of being out and about at the weekend a little, last weekend the Foodie festival at Battersea Park, and yesterday a potter down to Brighton with a tasty lunch at Bill's Place which I had seen mixed reviews about but I really enjoyed.

So, blueberry muffins, pantry style. Before being food aware if you will, I used to love shop/ cafe bought muffins, their sticky (almost claggy) cakeness being a signifier of a trip out, or a treat. And then I realised that I really don't like cake that sticks to the roof of my mouth much like peanut butter. The synthetic taste the fruit seems to take on, and the oversweetness combining to turn me off them completely. In fact I pretty much gave up on muffins in their entirety. I tried baking my own - Nigella's Christmas ones, but found they didn't live up to their hype (I've since discovered I like my spicing heavy in some recipes - that being one of them). And so, much like the shop bought pasta sauces, muffins were left on the back burner, cupcakes being my treat of choice.

A couple of weeks back I had bluberries in my veg box, I'm sure there's plenty of exciting, challenging things I could have done with them, but I fancied muffins and wanted to pair the sharp fruit with some dense ground almonds. I couldn't find a recipe, so looked around and developed one that did what I wanted it to, and I have to say I was impressed - as were Mark and my landlord.

Blueberry Muffins - Penelope's Pantry style

This easily made about 12 regular sized muffins - I would say it would do about 6 - 8 massive coffee shop style ones, and you could easily stretch the mixture to 24 smaller ones for a children's party or if there are more people in your office (says she, speaking from experience!).

Ingredients

200g self raising flour
100g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
50g unsalted butter (cold from the fridge)
80g caster sugar (I used golden)
150g fresh blueberries
2 eggs, lightly beaten
225ml milk
1 teaspoon almond extract/ essence

Method

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees or Gas 6, and line a 12 cup muffin tin with cake cases.
In a mixing bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and ground almonds together.
Add the butter and rub in as you would for crumble topping, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
Stir in the sugar and blueberries
In a jug, mix the eggs, milk and almond extract together
Pour all of the wet ingredients into the mixing bowl and as quickly as possible stir until it's just combined
Spoon the batter into muffin cases - about a tablespoon per case
Bake for 25 minutes until golden, cool in the tin and then tip out onto a wire rack

These went fantastically with coffee, the sweet muffins contrasting with the coffee - add a dash of almond essence (or amaretto!) to your coffee to bring out the flavour further.

I think these would work really well with raspberries and am a bit annoyed I realised this just as the raspberries were coming to an end. I'm thinking of what to do with blackberries next.