Muffins for breakfast

I read somewhere, which was probably Nigella, that Italians eat cakes and puddings for breakfast. That seems an excellent idea to me and you'll often find us eating up the leftover Sunday pud - apple crumble and custard or sticky toffee pudding and ice cream - for breakfast on a Monday morning. It gets the week off to a great start and it feels slightly naughty (especially the ice cream bit!)

Why not though? It can't be worse than some of the sugary breakfast cereals currently on sale. I often make muffins too. They're quick and easy to make and I usually make them to use up whatever fruit is about to go rotten in the fruit bowl before we can eat it. This is usually bananas, but can be strawberries or nectarines. I usually use wholemeal flour too as it feels more wholesome and breakfasty.

Today it was two bananas. They had passed the just-spotty-and-totally-delicious phase and were well on the way to falling-out-of-the-skin-in-a-very-bananary-way phase.

So I made muffins, but not without my orders. R6 doesn't like the brown bits that really ripe bananas leave in muffins but doesn't mind the flavour so subterfuge is the order of the day. "Make them really choclatey," I was told, so I did.

Bananachocanilla Muffins

MAKES: 12 big muffins.

INGREDIENTS:

(I always make muffins in ounces for some reason...)

7oz plain wholemeal flour
1 oz cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4oz dark soft brown sugar
4oz melted butter
1 large egg
4 fl oz milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
two very ripe bananas
chopped plain chocolate - about a couple of ounces, whatever is to hand.

METHOD:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, break up any lumps and whisk with a fork to get some air into the mix.
2. Mix the wet ingredients together.
3. Mush the bananas and add them with the wet ingredients and the choc chips into the dry ingredients.
4. Stir briefly until just about mixed. Too much mixing makes them tough.
5. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas mark 5 (190 degrees C) for 10 to 15 minutes until springy on top. Eat for breakfast with a glass of milk.

If you're feeling really self-indulgent you could spread a bit of Nutella on these as you eat them but that would be VERY naughty indeed, and don't even think about putting ice cream on these too as the Diet Police will be hammering on your door...

Sunday pancakes

Sunday is always pancakes day. We don't rush out of bed, so it's usually at least 8am by the time I'm digging the blender out of the cupboard. The coffee maker goes on and bubbles away to Aled Jones on Radio Two's Good Morning Sunday while I make the batter. Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs generally accompanies the actual cooking part. It all makes for a mellow, relaxed Sunday morning, before I charge off on a long run. Today it's an eight miler, so I feel quite at liberty to smother at least four of these pancakes in maple syrup or Nutella.

These are based on Nigella Lawson's banana buttermilk pancakes from 'Feast', but as ever I have tweaked things to suit the way I like to cook them.

RECIPE: Banananilla Sunday Pancakes

Place the following into a blender and whiz:

Two (or three) VERY ripe bananas, the sort that are so black they're falling out of their skins in a banana-type strip tease. Less ripe ones work too, but are less bananary. Green ones are foul. Just don't.

1 egg. Or two, if you've got hens and they're showing off. I have been known to add up to four eggs to this.

250 ml plain yoghurt. (The original recipe specifies buttermilk, if you've got a pot of that, use it. I've always got yoghurt and rarely got buttermilk. If you've got neither use milk, perhaps a little less to begin with, you can always add more. Acidify the milk with a little lemon juice - the acid reacts with the raising agents and makes the pancakes fluffy.)

150g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

(Last Sunday I forgot to add the baking powder and the bicarb. The pancakes were still edible, but they tasted slightly sour - no alkaline agents for the acids in the yoghurt to react with and make carbon dioxide bubble to make the pancakes fluffy. Not just a recipe - a science lesson too!)

30g (about a tablespoonful - life's too short to measure this!) melted butter.

A good slug of vanilla extract.

Whiz together until nicely blended, then dollop spoonfuls (about one and a half tablespoonfuls per pancake) onto a hot griddle. Wait until bubbles appear...

...then flip over to cook the other side.

Pile onto a plate and serve.

Serve with maple syrup, golden syrup, Nutella, strawberry jam, peanut butter, chocolate sauce, toffee sauce, honey, etc!

Variations.

Add: More bananas, less bananas, very ripe pear, tablespoonful of peanut butter, blueberries (drop onto the surface of the pancakes before flipping), wholemeal flour, handful of porridge oats, chopped plain chocolate (choconananilla pancakes), the sky's the limit, play!