Going bananas

I made banana cupcakes for a workmate. I finished work at 5pm, got home by around 5.30pm and started making them.


In order to put the frosting on, I needed the cupcakes to cool. So into the fridge they went. Hmm.. slightly cooled. So I topped them with cream cheese frosting, and then with a slice of banana. Unfortunately, the banana condensed and went a bit gooey on top. I would have topped it with dried banana instead, but I didn't get time to pop out to buy some. Oh well. :(

I hope the cupcakes were okay. And that your friends enjoyed them and the message they were supposed to convey. ;)


But I think in future, I need more than 1.5hrs to make them.. They really do need the time to cool by themselves before the toppings can be added. >_<

Lesson learnt. :)

Rice pudding pots

Rice pudding. Sweet rissoto. Chè.
Whatever you want to call it, it's basically all the same.

To be exact, this is rice pudding. A non asian version. It's easy to make. But unfortunately, I kinda made too much. Haha... -__-


Oh, how I love these ramekins. I have a set of 5. My colourful pretty little pots! Hehe. <3

Rice pudding
Makes about 20 servings

2 cups arborio rice
5 cups water

1 cup milk
3 whole cloves
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup sugar

Rinse rice.
In a large pot, boil water, add rice. Bring it up to the boil again, then turn down heat to low.
Leave to simmer until it is no longer watery. Stir once in a while. This should take about 30mins or so for the rice to become almost creamy like.
In another saucepan, melt sugar in milk. Add cloves and vanilla.
Once sugar has melted, turn the heat to low.
Remove cloves.
Mix into rice.
Set aside.

Banana custard

1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp corn flour
2 ripe bananas, mashed

In another saucepan, add milk, sugar and vanilla.
Take the saucepan off the heat.
Beat in egg yolks quickly. Mix in corn flour. Add in banana.
Bring it back to the heat and stir constantly until mixture thickens.

Serve with rice pudding.


Serve warm or cold.
Refrigerate when not being eaten.

You can also serve with other fruits instead of banana, such as mango or berries. Mmm..

Apple and banana muffins, café style

What to do with over ripe bananas?
Mash them of course! :)

And put them in muffins! Yum yum~


Apple and banana muffins - café style
Makes 12 large muffins

3 cups self raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

3 ripe bananas, mashed
3 small apples, peeled and diced

2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tablespoons margarine, melted and cooled

Sift dry ingredients together.
Create a well in the centre, add liquid ingredients.
Mix until combined.

Add banana and apple and combine. Do not overmix.

Scoop into lined muffin trays.

Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 15mins. Then turn down to 160C and bake for another 10-15mins or until cooked.

Cool on a wire rack before serving.

One thing to another

I love glutinous rice, glutinous rice flour, rice flour.. etc. Asians love to cook desserts with this stuff. With mung bean, coconut milk/cream, sago, ginger, tapioca, coconut, etc etc.

I had a craving for 'tong yuen'. It's usually eaten during 'Winter Soltice' which is later in the year, but I wanted to eat some now. Haha. So I made some! :) I'm sure most Asians are familiar with the taste of these things. (Chinese, Malay-Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian..etc all have similar types of such desserts).

But, I don't have a recipe for this. (Because I didn't take any measures down). I also rolled some in coconut as well. Oh, and I also tried making some rice cakes for tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cakes). They're currently sitting in the freezer, as I've yet to make the dish. Hehe. I'll post a recipe when I do so.

Anywho, I had ginger syrup and coconut leftover from the 'tong yuen'. So.. I made a banana, coconut and ginger loaf. :P Unfortunately, the ginger taste was masked. There's only a very slight hint of it. :( I wished I had some more ginger. I don't even have ginger powder in the house! (I ran out long long ago and just haven't bought any)


Banana, coconut and ginger loaf
Makes a small/medium loaf (12 slices)

1 2/3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup dessicated coconut
2 tbsp sugar (add more depending on how sweet your syrup is)
1 ripe banana
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup ginger syrup (which I had left over from 'tong yuen' - glutinous rice balls in ginger syrup. It's just sugar, water and ginger pieces.)
1 tbsp minced ginger (the ginger pieces from the ginger syrup)

Sift and mix flour, baking powder, sugar and coconut in a bowl.
In another bowl, mix egg, milk, syrup, ginger and banana.
Slowly combined the liquid mixture with the dry mixture.
Pour into a lined/greased medium loaf pan.
Bake in a preheated 175C oven for 45mins or until cooked.
Cool on a wire rack before slicing and serving.


Yum yum :)

The best pancakes!

I used to not eat breakfast. Throughout primary school and highschool, I would skip breakfast. I just didn't have an appetite so I just couldn't eat. Only up until the past 2-3 years have I eaten breakfast. And up until last year, I've been having it daily. Why? Because I fell in love with cereal. I used to hate eating cereal because it got boring eating the same cereal. So I decided to buy a variety of cereals. And it works. I didn't get sick of cereal. I have quite a few boxes of different cereals waiting to be eaten.

Uncly Tobys Sultana Oat Crisp, Sanitarium Weet-Bix, Sanitarium Light and Tasty Three Berries, Sanitarium Wild Berry Weet-Bix bites, Sanitarium Light and Tasty Apricot, Kelloggs Just Right, Kelloggs All Bran Dual, Kelloggs All Bran, Kelloggs Crunchy Nut, Sanitarium Light and Tasty Macadamia with oat clusters, Kelloggs cornflakes and Kelloggs Crispix to name a few. Okay, that wasn't a few. Haha. But it's not all though. The nutty ones are for my sister and I don't really like them. I'm like the cereal regulator. I'm the one that keeps track of the cereal and buys them. Yes, I buy a lot of cereal. If I could, I'd eat cereal for lunch and dinner as well. I love cereal that much! I'm a cereal killer. But.. I'll discuss my cereal obsession another day.

Sadly, today.. I ditched the cereal. I'm sorry cereal, it's only for one day. I still love you!

Last night, I decided that I wanted to make pancakes. Not just any pancake, but banana pancakes! (There's a lot of bananas in the house! :D)


And these were the best pancakes I've ever made!
So soft.. so delicious!! .. I love you!

Banana yoghurt pancakes
Makes about 12

1 tsp cream of tartar
1 2/3 cups milk

2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup banana and honey yoghurt
1 medium ripe banana, mashed

Mix cream of tartar with milk. Leave for 5 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, sift flour with baking powder, sugar and cinnamon.
Make a well in the centre and add the milk, egg, yoghurt and vanilla extract.
Mix until well combined and then add the banana and combine again.

Let the mixture sit for 10-15mins. (I didn't leave it for long though, because I was late in making breakfast. I thought it would be brunch, but I ended up eating it for lunch. Haha)

Grease a pan with little margarine and quickly add 3-4 tbsps of the batter into the pan.
Cook on med-low for a few minutes (watching for bubbles appearing and batter setting, as well as checking the bottom to see if it's burnt), before flipping the pancake over.

The pancakes should rise and feel soft and fluffy.


Serve warm, as is..


or with some golden syrup/maple syrup, extra bananas and/or cinnamon. (Or with some vanilla ice-cream if not consuming for breakfast! Whatever you fancy or have on hand really!)


Deliciously soft and fluffy with a yummy banana taste! It is exceptionally good with extra golden syrup and cinnamon! I could have added some extra sliced bananas, but I'd be way too full.


Looks like one gigantic plate of giant-sized pancakes that she looks deviously happy to devour. :P

Okay, and here it is again. The best pancakes so far! Mmmm.


Mmmm. I'm so full right now. :)

Delightfully full.

Bread(less) and butter(less) pudding

I've just discovered a new dessert! Haha. Tastes like bread and butter pudding.. only without the bread and without the butter. Okay, this creation was unintentional. I mean, I.. wasn't concentrating on what I was doing and ended up with a higher liquid to flour ratio than needed. Thus, I didn't end up with cake; I ended up with pudding! Haha. I was wondering why it was still very moist after a long while of baking. -__-


Banana and date pudding
Makes a medium slab and 3 mini bundts

2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
125gm dried dates, chopped and soaked in 1 cup water
2 medium/small ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
4 tbsp milk
2 tbsp corn oil
2 cups banana and honey yoghurt

Preheat oven to 180C.

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar together.
Mix egg, milk, oil, yoghurt, dates (including the water from soaking) and banana together.
Combine liquid mixture with flour and mix till evenly combined.
Pour into lined/greased baking tins.

Bake slice tray for 50mins, and 30mins for the 3 bundt tins.

Serve immediately, by itself or with some vanilla ice-cream. Reheat in microwave when required. This is best served hot/warm, I tell you!!

Perfect hole for a scoop of vanilla ice-cream! Hehe


When it's hot, it's a gooey-ish mixture. But when it cools.. it's not as gooey. I don't like it when it's cooled though. It doesn't taste as good. It tasted best when hot out of the oven, with the crisp edges and goey banana and date centre. Mmm. Sort of reminds me of Asian cakes made with glutinous rice flour or so. :D Yum yum yum..

Coconut banana and sago cake

It's been days since I last baked. I couldn't stand it. I had to do something. Baking and cooking are like oxygen to me. I need it to live.

My mum made che chuoi chung the other day. It's a Vietnamese dessert consisting of bananas, coconut milk/cream, sugar and sago/tapioca pearls. It's pretty simple to make if you think about it. You basically just simmer everything in a cooking pot (with some slight specifications such as soaking pearls or cooking bananas first). I don't have a recipe or the correct ingredient proportions for it. Mum doesn't use measuring tools or specific amounts, so it's hard for me to translate that into a recipe right now. I'll make up a recipe for it one day.. but if you're interested right now, just google up "che chuoi chung" and you can probably find a recipe out there on the internet somewhere.

Seeing as there was plenty of the dessert left, I decided to bake a cake out of it. Today's theme of baking is 'leftovers'. Haha. :P


Coconut banana and sago cake
Makes a large round cake

1 1/3 cup self raising flour
1/3 cup corn flour
1 tsp baking soda
4 tbsp sugar (add more sugar if you like things sweet)

1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
2 cups sago/coconut/banana Vietnamese dessert (che chuoi chung)

Sift and mix flours, baking soda and sugar.

In another bowl, mix egg, milk and sago mixture.

Add the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix until well combined.

Line or grease a baking tin and then pour mixture in. (I used a large springform cake tin. I lined the bottom with baking paper and greased the sides with margarine)

Bake at 165C for 50mins or until golden brown/cooked.
Remove onto cooling rack and allow to cool before serving.


The cake is moist and not too sweet (which suits my tastes, but might not suit those with a sweet tooth). It has a nice banana fragrance and you can see the sago/tapioca pearls (mostly at the bottom as they had sunk)~ :D The purple bits in the cake are the banana. I'm not sure what reaction it underwent to become like that.. but it happens in other Vietnamese recipes too. (For eg. The one with the banana in the centre of glutinous rice, rolled and wrapped up in banana leaves and steamed. I'm not sure what it's called, but the banana turns out purple too!)

Banana cinnamon and date muffins

I had this urge to bake muffins.
Since class starts at 2pm, I had time to bake before uni. :D

Hehe. I purchased 2000 muffin casings when I was in Singapore. It'll last me a while.. Haha. I bought 2 different floral designs. I only used one design for these muffins.


Banana cinnamon and date muffins
Makes about 24 standard muffins

2 cups plain flour
1 cup quick cooking oats
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla extract
8 tbsp milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup banana and honey yoghurt (I used Yoplait formé banana and creamy honey)
2 tbsp vegetable oil

4 small ripe bananas, mashed
13 dried pitted dates, chopped and soaked in 1/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 175C.

Sift and mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar in a large bowl. Add in oats and mix.

In another bowl, mix egg, milk, yoghurt, banana, dates + the water, vanilla extract and oil until combined.

Add the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. Your batter should be not too thick and not to thin.

Scoop batter into greased muffin pans or line them with baking paper.

Bake for 18mins. Remove from oven and onto cooling rack.


Again.. they stuck to the casings. Sigh. I should remember to grease the casings next time.


Oh well. They're moist with banana and dates and are cinnamon fragrant. These satisfied my baking and cinnamon craving. :D

Now to get ready for uni.

Update: Ok. They're easier to peel after a few hours (less sticks to the bottom). :)
Update: Overnight, they don't stick at all. :D

Banana and date cake

I decided that I had to bake it tonight, whatever it was I was making. Haha. The bananas were overly ripe and I wanted to use them up fast. I couldn't decide whether to make cookies or cake. But I ended up making a cake as I threw the ingredients together whilst deciding. :)


Mmmm. The aroma of bananas and cinnamon baking in the oven :D


Banana and date cake

2 cups self raising flour
1 cup cooking oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

2 eggs, beaten lightly
1 cup milk
1/4 cup corn oil

1 cup chopped dried pitted dates soaked in 1/4 cup water
2 overly ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat oven to 175C.
In a mixing bowl, sift flour, baking powder and sugar, and then mix in the oats.
Form a well in the centre, and add in milk, eggs and oil.
Mix with a wooden spoon until even.
Add in dates (it doesn't matter if it hasn't soaked up all the liquid) and mashed banana. Mix until uniform.
Pour/spoon batter into a lined or greased slice/baking pan. (I lined a slice tray with baking paper. The tray was approx. 30cm x 20cm x 2.5cm in size)


Bake for 30mins or until cooked.


Remove from oven and allow to cool.
Slice and serve.

Lining with baking paper not only prevents the cake from sticking (for easier removal without the use of oil/butter), but also prevents overflow by giving the cake additional 'walls' to rise upon. Gotta love the baking paper!


The cake was moist, banana and cinnamon fragrant and was not too sweet. It goes great with a cup of hot jasmine tea (I love my tea!) or with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream (especially good for this hot Summer weather). Too bad most of the dates sunk to the bottom though. :/