No sugar banana muffins for Jay Bird's birthday

It was my dear friend Jay Bird's birthday today. We visited her with these muffins. She's diabetic so I didn't put any sugar in them but they were nicely sweet anyway because of the banana and raisins in them. The hardest part was trying to make them look a bit decorated without using icing. I glazed them with a little fruit spread and sprinkled with poppy seeds. Without icing, I think they fell short of being like birthday cakes but were a perfect accompaniment to our mid-morning birthday tea and chatter.

There must be something pretty and non-sugary that could serve as icing without using sugar. I'm thinking maybe something with creamed coconut in it like the filling for these biscuits I made a while back. In that case I would have to leave out the raisins and cinnamon from the cakes though, or there would be too much going on!


Banana and raisin muffins

1 cup soya milk
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 bananas
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 175c.

Mix the vinegar into the soya milk and set aside while you mash the bananas. Add the milk mixture to the bananas along with the oil, sugar and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix all the other ingredients except raisins. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and combine well. Add the raisins and stir.

Spoon into 10 muffin cases (I made 12 from this mixture but they looked a bit small in their muffin cases) and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

This is not Jay Bird. This is just a bird I made for Jay Bird's birthday. Isn't she pretty? Of course, Jay Bird herself is much prettier.

Cashew cheese, apple muffins and pink kittens

This is my version of Dreena Burton's pasta with truffled cashew cheese. I thought it looked good so I decided to make it before I realised that we don't have any conchiglie pasta so I couldn't stuff the cheese inside shells. Instead I layered the cashew cheese in a dish with pasta which I'd tossed in Waitrose tomato and chilli pasta sauce (which tastes like Heinz tomato soup and that's no bad thing!). Then I topped the dish with more sauce, truffle oil and capers and baked for half an hour. It turned out amazing. My photos don't do it justice but it was lovely. I'll definitely make the truffled cashew cheese again. It would be good in so many things.

Since the oven was hot, I also made some apple muffins.

As for the pink kittens, well I have a bit of an obsession with Crawford's Pink Wafers. I eat them a lot! Recently I got to thinking, if I covered them in chocolate, could I make Kit Kats? I used to love Kit Kats but they're made with milk chocolate. I was so excited when they started making dark chocolate ones but then I saw that they're not vegan either. These home made ones are really gorgeous. My cousin has dubbed them Pink Kittens - Thanks Sam!

Apple cinnamon muffins

This was another recipe from La Dolce Vegan. The book was a gift recently from a very kind friend so I've been testing out some recipes from it. I won't include the recipe here because it doesn't already seem to be on the web anywhere but I recommend the book because the recipes I've tried have been really good - these muffins included, they're ace!

The only complaint I have of the book is that there are no food photos in it, only photos of the author and her mates. Vivacious, charming and elaborately tatooed though she is, I want to see the food!! Anyone have photos of recipes they've made from this book? Maybe I could print them and stick them in!