It’s been a while since I’ve done this.
/ Banana pancakes*
/ 1 pear
/ orange juice with tap water
/ PG tips
Recipe for single serving pancakes:
Ingredients
1 banana
1 egg
2 tablespoons flour
What to do
Mash the banana with a fork (or mixer if you want). Add egg and flour. Stir until you have a smooth batter.
Heat a pan and grease with a bit of butter. Pour the batter and wait for bubbles to show, then turn the pancakes. Bake until golden.
I’ve made these a couple of times and because it’s such a basic, quick and easy recipe it’s quickly becoming my go to “Sunday morning, I want warm breakfast with freshly baked stuff” breakfast item.
So let me share this little gem with you.
Ingredients
225g flour
2tsp baking powder
1tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt
75g butter
1 egg
75ml milk
2tbsp honey
1 apple, chopped in small pieces
What to do
Pre-heat the oven to 220°C.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add in small pieces of the butter and mix it until the dough has a crumbly texture.
Add the chopped apples. In a bowl beat together the milk, egg and honey. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir until you have a smooth dough.
Roll it until it’s about 1,5cm high and cut into pieces. I used a small glass to make round shapes, but you can do pretty much whatever you want.
Bake for 8-10 minutes and enjoy them warm!
Year after year I look forward to Christmas for months. Sometimes I get teary eyed thinking about it when I’m alone in my car… in September. I’m not kidding – I don’t even know why Christmas has become such an emotional holiday for me in the past couple of years.
Anyways, this december has been quite stressful for me. Filled with university work, my new job, discovering and learning new things about myself and trying to become the kind of person I want to be. It’s been a struggle but also rewarding and beautiful.
For everyone else who’s having a hard time this holiday season, know that you are not alone. I hope you find peace and quiet moments with the people you love and if you ever need to get something off your chest then feel free to write me a message me wherever, whenever.
Christmas is celebrated on the eve of the 24th in Austria and while I wait for my family to come over to stuff ourselves with Raclette and chocolate fondue, let me quickly share the recipe for the aperitif I’m going to serve in a little while.
Cranberry-Pomegranate Sparkler
Ingredients:
1 cup of pomegranate juice
1 cup of cranberry juice (unsweetened if you can)
juice of one big mandarin (or orange)
about 5 tablespoons of mandarin simple sirup
For the mandarin simple sirup:
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water
the zest of 1 big mandarin (without the bitter white stuff, so really only super thin layers of the peel!)
How to make the simple sirup:
In a sauce pan put together the sugar, water and mandarin zest. Heat up until it’s boiling and the sugar is completely dissolved. Let cool completely.
How to assemble the drink:
Combine the juices and 5 (or more, depending on how sweet you want the mix to be!) tablespoons of the sirup.
Pour into champagne flutes and top of with champagne.
You can chill the juice mix for hours until you’re ready to serve the drink. For the champagne to not mix with the juice I’d recommend pouring the champagne over the back of a teaspoon that’s pressed to the inside of the champagne flute.
As decoration I’ve used rosemary sticks with fresh cranberries.
Recipe adapted from here.
I feel like it might take you longer to say that recipe name than it does to bake these cookies.
In an attempt to get rid of the excess amount of peanut butter that was residing in my kitchen, I looked up a couple of recipes. Originally my plan was to make peanut butter granola, but then I found a recipe for peanut butter-oatmeal cookies and just couldn’t resist. I haven’t made cookies in so long!
This is the recipe source I used, but I adapted it (I only had one banana, and no coconut oil or agave sirup, so I split the amount in half and worked with what I had at home).
Ingredients
1 large, ripe banana
1/2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tbsp honey
1/4 cup of peanut butter (the original source said creamy, I used chunky and I like that it has the extra crunch to it!)
1 1/4 cup of rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup of dark chocolate (I chopped it myself, but chocolate chips work just as well) I used more because… chocolate!
What to do
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Mash the banana in a large bowl. Add the peanut butter, honey and oil, mix until it is smooth. In a medium bowl mix together the oats, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add it to the banana-peanut butter mix and stir it together. Add the chocolate chunks and stir until it is well blended.
Use 2 spoons and drop the mix on the baking sheet. Bake for around 10 minutes or until the cookies set.
Apricots are in season once again. My mum brought home a bunch from a friend’s garden and I didn’t know what to do with them. All I knew was, that I was sick and tired of the usual apricot cake recipes.
So I went over to Pinterest and looked around for a bit. Pinterest never fails to provide me with fun and easy recipes, today was no exception. After a while I found a recipe that sounded promising. I altered it a bit. You should know by now that I’m a lazy baker ;-)
Ingredients
2 cups / 10,5 oz / 300g all purpose flour
1/2 cup / 3,5 oz / 100g brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup / 6,7 oz / 190g greek yoghurt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1lb / 450g ripe apricots (cored and cut into small pieces)
Optional
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp fresh grated ginger
I imagine cinnamon would work too.
I didn’t use any of this and it still turned out really well.
What to do
Pre-heat the oven to 360°F/180°C. Butter and flour a loaf pan.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a medium bowl beat sugar and eggs together. Gently mix in the yoghurt. Stir in the dry ingredients and fold in the apricot pieces. Make sure it’s all blended well together. I was a bit concerned at first because the batter was firmer than what I usually work with but don’t let this deter you, mine turned out really well and moist in the end.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Mine was done after about 40 minutes.
Recipe Source (I altered it slightly)
Standard of Grace 