Free Fruit!

 

Yesterday Dean had the pleasure of driving all the way down to my mothers house and back! and she loaded him up with some lovely fruit. Well the bananas are on their way out and half the Apricots are soft and bruised. Actually to look at this photo some of you (you know the whole 3 of you that read my blog) may say WHAT! but i say hellllooo baking day!

With kids going back to school in about a month and banana prices going up i would be stupid not to put these beauties to work. So banana bread it is for today. There are about 30 bananas there and so that calls for alot of bread. I have a whole bunch of apple sauce that i bottled from last season that needed to be used. I remember seeing a recipe i have somewhere that called for apple sauce so there you go. But when i read the review on the bread again i noticed that people were say to substitue this and that and wow! so i just took a bit from each advice and this is what i did. Its not the fluffiest banana bread recipe i have but its definantly moist, going into school lunch boxes, and my kids will eat it. Or do what i found out Charna was doing with my muffins last year SELL them! (she didnt actually know she was selling them she said to me one day that she swapped someone $2 for my muffin i had to explain to her that that is selling!)

Banana bread the way i made it with Apple sauce

Blend 5 bananas together

add

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

mix and leave to sit for 15mins

then add

2 eggs

1/2 cup of applesauce

mix well

add

1tsp vanilla

2 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking soda

1tsp baking powder

1tsp cinnamon or chocolate chips

I had a block of lindt dark chocolate with pear pieces inside no one in this house was going to eat it like it was so into the bread it went. 2 loaves with cinnamon and 2 with choc for today!

Mix  till only just combined then bake in 2 loaf pans for 30-45 mins. Im going to wrap them and freeze them for school. 1 loaf =1 week. It wont last the whole week but if i haven't had the chance to bake that week or if its Monday and im not organized, thats when i whip them out. And at least they have had some sort of homemadeness for the week. : )

I also made some fried banana scones for a treat today. So in total ive used 13 bananas. I will also make muffins and a cake for the freezer for school. It just makes life alot easier on those mornings you cant be bothered. . Ill also freeze a few of them for a later date. Waste not want not!. With the apricots i made jam and the kids ate some. I actually have a recipe for a cake that i want to try using fresh apricots not dried.

My sweet buns!!

To the left are coconut buns (a sweet roll baked in sweet coconut milk), man they were good. I was craving these real bad for some reason. So i made them, the beauty of having a bread machine to take out all the hard work. They were so soft and lovely. I think i am failing my children by not cooking them this stuff more often.




These are Mexican sweet rolls. My loving husband wanted them, looked up a recipe and then asked me to make them!!. They are really nice.I had no idea what they were supposed to taste like or anything, mine looked like the pictures, it was quite a heavy dough so i had to rise it for ages but it was worth the wait. And there was no bread machine involved with these babies.

Choices

OK so over the past few months the lovely fruit trees in the back yard have ripened and blessed us with its bounty. There are a few choices that can be made from this 1- eat fruit straight from the trees, and actually we have been the kids ate the green gauges before i even had a chance to preserve anything if i was to. 2- give it away, i have given away when i have remembered. 3- preserve them!!
My good friend Liz Walker gave me a preserving book for my birthday this year called Year in a bottle by Sally Wise. Even though over the years gone i have put my hand to making jams most of the time they never have quite set the way i would like, for example last year i made plum jam and it sort of turned into a sweet sauce, a few years before i tried marmalade and i used it for cordial. Well with the jam instead of chucking it i still jarred it and just use it for a base to marinades. But you know we all have choices in life that we have to make, i could have looked at those trees in the yard and watched the fruit drop off them and go and buy my jam and chutneys, or i could put in a little elbow grease and actually do something about it. I had a new book to use so below are some of the fruits of my labor pardon the pun. I can honestly say that even though i really enjoy cooking i thought preserving would be a drag. One day twice a month and none of it was boring. the apricots my mum picked for me went to my favorite apricot jam (home made) and the most lovely chutney i have tasted, the apples are up and i will feed Baydan with the apple sauce while he gets on to solids (all for free) and then the yellow plum jam and the i guess normal plum jam are divine. Thank you Sally wise for being the vessel i used to get me inspired and excited about preserving.