A friend of mine is due her second baby in the next few weeks, and it seemed only fitting to have a party to celebrate his imminent arrival.
So all things 'baby' were prepared including 'Boiled Egg Prams', Mandarin Sail Boats on sparkling blue jelly, and lots of games where we had to guess the size of the Bump, identify the baby food flavours and write down our wish list for the new arrival.
My contribution was to bake muffins, so I decide to throw together some dried tropical fruits, coat them with blue cream cheese icing, and top them each off with a Jelly Baby.
In a large bowl mix together:
375g self-raising flour
220g caster sugar
a sprinkling of nutmeg
In a small bowl mix together:
90g melted butter
half cup sour cream
quarter cup milk
2 large eggs
vanilla essence
Mix the wet into the dry ingredients
Stir in:
1 cup mixed dried tropical fruits, mango, pineapple, and top up with mixed berries if needed.
Divide the mixture into 12 muffin cases
Bake on Gas 5/6 for 20-25 minutes
Leave in the tin for a few minutes before moving onto a wire rack to cool
Once cool make up the icing:
mix half a tub of cream cheese
with blue food colouring
and a tablespoon of caster sugar
Dollop it on the cool muffins and top with jelly babies
Eat the remaining jelly babies before anyone else notices!
Well it's been a while since I blogged, which could make you feel August is not a month for inventing new flavours, but you'd be wrong. I have had a few challenges thrown at me along the summer - my brother challenged me to create some muffins at his house, just to see if I could make them just as well 'out of my comfort zone'. He didn't have gas, and had a fan oven. I don't know the conversions, so we had to 'internet' the answers. He chucked a couple of large mangos at me and said "bake". His kitchen proved to be a challenge, his baking ingredients were spread out in several cupboards (oh how I love my pantries back home, where everything is in one 'baking' space). His weighing scales weren't digital - I needed a microscope to read the bars! But we ventured on, and despite the lack of a microwave for melting the butter, between us we managed to make a dozen mango and vanilla muffins that tasted just yummy. so we ate them for supper, breakfast and lunch, but did save a couple for my niece when she came to stay too. The recipe was guessed at so I can't even tell you what went in them, but it just goes to show that you can make muffins anywhere, anytime and I succeeded in my challenge! phew!!
This is (obviously) not a picture of the mango muffins, but a giraffe we met at Chester Zoo, who looks like she is eating one of them!
This weekend the muffins were mango and blueberry - recipe below
375g or self raising flour
220g caster sugar
mix together in a big bowl
melt 90g butter in the microwave for 45 seconds
add
half a cup sour cream
quarter cup of milk2 large free range eggs
stir together
mix the wet ingredients into the dry ones
then add half a cup of chopped mango pieces
and half a cup of blueberries
divide into 12 muffin cases and bake on gas 5 or 6 for 20-25 minutes
They were slightly undercooked which for me was most delicious, not sure how Sara, Daniel and Rachel enjoyed them, but I was a happy bunny.
The photo, however, is not of Sara, Dan and Rachel - but was the nearest thing I had to a photo of a Mango - this is where they come from; the fruit that is, from the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. There were definitely mangoes on the sun shelter behind us! ~ along with pineapple, sticky rice and bananas.
