Happy Halloween!!

I hope you have a spooky day today! Last week at work I had a pumpkin carving morning with some of the members. It was the first time they had ever carved a pumpkin and they really enjoyed it! I decided to make use of the leftover pieces and make them some pumpkin pie for the monthly social we were having a few days later. I've never made pumpkin pie with real puree...always the canned Libbys filling. I was nervous I wouldn't be able to get it to taste as sweet. Well, there was no reason to fear. They came out awesome and here's the link to the recipe I used. I originally wanted to do the bite sized ones on Bakerella but coudn't find a mini muffin tin and wanted to use evaporated milk instead of cream cheese. I'm really excited to know that if my annual Thanksgiving care package doesn't make it from home then I can improvise with some real pumpkins :D

Oh and here's what I wore to work today!

A close-up of my spider tights!

And here's our carved pumpkin!

xx

Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins

On Thursday I had the day off from work. Little one was pretty good most of the day and took a big long nap! I decided to use up a few bananas I had before they went too bad. I found a recipe for Banana and Peanut Butter muffins here. It's by Rachel Allen, an Irish chef. Her recipe does not call for any frosting or extra decoration (because I suppose they are muffins and not cupcakes...) but I just thought that peanut butter begs to be paired with Nutella so I added some!

Here are the ingredients:

• 275 g plain flour
• 50 g oats
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 75 g light brown sugar
• 2 bananas
• 115 g crunchy peanut butter (I used smooth)
• 50 g butter, melted
• 250 ml milk

And the directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/gas 5. 

2. Fill a muffin tray with 12 paper muffin cases. 

3. Mix the flour, oats, and baking powder in a bowl and set aside. 

4. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, and then stir in the sugar, mashed bananas, peanut butter and the melted butter. 

5. Add the milk and stir to combine. 

6. Gently fold in the dry ingredients until just combined; do not over mix. 

7. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 18-25 minutes, or until the tops spring back when gently touched. 

8. Allow to stand for a minute before turning out to cool on a wire rack. 

The finished product! I think they look really yummy with the frosting and extra dried banana chips as decoration. I must admit that they weren't as sweet as I had hoped they would be. I don't think the recipe calls for enough sugar or peanut butter so if I make them again, I would probably double the amounts of both. I would also leave out the oats because they didn't really add anything to the muffins in my opinion! Despite the gripes, everyone who had one said they were great :D