Energy food challenge - Banana chocolate flapjacks

Last May I cycled along the Camino De Santiago route across Spain, 550 miles in all including two mountain ranges. On the very first day we had 14 miles of non-stop uphill.

A long way up!

You're probably thinking, what's this got to do with food? Well Hopie over at hopie's kitchen has laid down an energy food challenge. Her Mum is preparing to cycle 109 miles to raise money for research into blood cancers. Nearly 1 million Americans are suffering from some form of blood cancer and each year 53,000 die, I'm sure you'll agree it is a very worthy cause. Naturally cycling all that way will require a lot of energy. Hopie's chalenge is to create a recipe for energy food, whether it is a main meal, snack or drink. I thought back to my time cycling in spain, the food that powered us up all those hills was flapjacks. They are ideal for cycling with as they easily be stuffed into a bag or pocket without coming to too much harm and are packed with energy, not to mention how delicious they are!

My entry for this challenge is flapjacks, but no ordinary flapjacks. I made Chocolate covered banana, honey and walnut flapjacks! The banana flavour comes through really well, it also helps keep the flapjacks soft and moist. Honey and walnuts just seemed a good idea and what can't be improved by chocolate?I am very pleased with how these turned out, this is exactly the kind of food I like to take with me when I go on long bike rides.

Enter the energy food challenge here. Get your entries in before the 22nd November!

Roast banana ice cream

I was walking around the market last week searching for one of my absolute favourite fruits, the greengage. Every year when autumn comes around I await their arrival, Scouring the shops and market looking for the first fruit of the season. They make what is possibly the very best of jams as well as excellent pies, tarts and crumbles. I like to eat them straight out of the paper bag.
Alas I had no luck this time, I couldn't find any. not one! So I bought a mountain of almost gone off bananas instead, as you do!
It was only once I was home that it dawned on me what a job it would be to use them all before they turned into banana sludge. So I got baking and two banana cakes later I had only used half of them!
Reaching banana overload I searched everywhere for a recipe that would use the last of my bananas and came across a recipe over at Butter, Sugar, Flour for roast banana ice cream. The original recipe is by David Lebovitz whose recipes are always great. The fact that I had all the ingredients to hand settled it.

To make Roast Banana Ice Cream you will need:

• 3 bananas (the riper the better, as in the picture is good)
  
• 75g brown sugar
• 1.5 cups (375ml) Single/light cream
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar (not pictured)
• 1.5 teaspoons lemon juice
• half teaspoon vanilla extract
• quarter teaspoon salt

Method:

1. First heat your oven to 200C/400f/Gas 6
2. Chop the bananas and place in a baking dish mixed with the brown sugar
3. Roast the bananas for 40 minutes turning halfway.
4. Blend the still hot bananas with the syrup from the tray along with the caster sugar, lemon juice, salt, cream and vanilla. When blended chill thoroughly in the fridge.
5. Churn in an ice cream machine until frozen (it will probably need a couple of hours in the freezer to firm up)

Roasting the bananas gave this ice cream an incredible intense banana-caramel flavour and a wonderful toffee colour. I served mine with toffee sauce but it would pair very well with chocolate desserts or with fruit.If you don't have an ice cream machine you can still make this recipe, instead of churning it you can freeze the mixture for about two hours then beat well with a fork and return to the freezer, repeat about once an hour until frozen.

Cupcakes for my first post

Well this is my first post and I thought I would show some pictures of "king cupcakes" that I made yesterday, the pictures are from my fancy new camera A FujiFilm A820 if you really care that I blew my money on this morning!! It was a bargain though.

These are peanut butter and banana cakes with peanut butter icing, I stuck a wanut on top because I didn't have any peanuts, Oh and I love walnuts! They taste delicious, you get a good mix of peanut and banana flavour, as well as being very moist.

These are really easy to make, I recommend them highly.

The recipe was found at the Culinary in the Desert blog Here http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/05/king-cupcakes.html