I am not a fan of bananas and so, whenever we buy them, they will invariably get overripe, go black and start to smell. These feral bananas however, make the most amazing muffins...
 

Ingredients (makes 12):

2 and 1/2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup raw sugar
Handful of chopped walnuts (I have no idea of the exact measurement, but let's just say 1/2 cup) 2 cups milk
3 overripe bananas
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

2. Line a muffin tin with patty pans. You could grease them, but I hate washing muffin tins, so I always use patty pans.

3. Combine the flour, sugar and nuts in a bowl.

4. In a blender, whizz up the milk, banana and vanilla essence.

5. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix well. The batter will be a very heavy, thick consistency.

6. Spoon the batter into the muffin tray and place in the oven for 25 minutes.

I am a bit of an obsessive groupie. Back in the 90’s I was a massive cricket groupie, stalking all the visiting cricket teams at the hotels and net practices… these days I stalk chefs, and with the internet at my disposal, the job is so much easier! One of my favourite chefs to stalk is Kurma Dasa. I first discovered him when I was in primary school, on SBS TV where he hosted his own cooking show. Then I got super excited to find out he was actually from the Melbourne Hare Krishna temple and I even got to meet him!! Now the obsessive groupie in me has once again come to the forefront and in about a month and a half, Bazza and I are going to be doing a cooking course with him! You have no idea how excited I am!!!

Anyway, as a frequent visitor of his blog, I regularly peruse through his recipes, and try out various things he makes. He hasn’t let me down so far, and this strawberry cream shortcake was no exception :-)

Ingredients (serves 6 – 8):

The cake:

1 1/4 cups self-raising flour

A pinch of salt

4 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons caster sugar

1⁄3 cup ground walnuts (I ground mine in a coffee grinder)

About 1⁄3 cup buttermilk

The cream topping:

300ml double cream

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon milk powder

The remaining topping ingredients:

4 tablespoons strawberry jam

250g ripe, strawberries cut in half

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200˚C.

2. Mix together the flour and salt in a large bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar and ground nuts.

3. Pour in three-quarters of the buttermilk and gather the mixture into a soft manageable dough. If too dry, add some more buttermilk. Knead the dough until it is smooth.

4. Line a 20cm pie dish with baking paper and press the dough in, ensuring that the sides of the dish are also well covered.

5. Place the cake in the oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool. Carefully remove the cake from the dish and peel away the baking paper.

6. Combine the cream, sugar, vanilla and powdered milk in a mixing bowl and whip it until the cream stands in soft peaks.

7. Spread the strawberry jam over the inside surface of the cake, then spread the cream over it, and finally top with the strawberries. Put in the fridge to chill for a few hours and then serve.

This is the second time I've made this cheesecake, and the first time, whilst tasting divine, it looked like a truck at hit it. This time I adjusted a few things, and it looked slightly better. Nothing like the recipe picture said it would look like, but it still looked good. And most importantly it tasted amazing, and thats what the SYV critics said :-)

Ingredients:

250g plain chocolate biscuits
150g butter, melted, plus 20g butter extra
300ml thickened cream (full fat)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
50g milk chocolate, finely chopped
3 and 1/2 teaspoons gelatine
1/4 cup (60ml) boiling water
2 x 250g packets cream cheese (room temperature)
1/2 cup (120g) caster sugar
3 x 60g Mars bars, finely chopped

1. Crush the biscuits in a food processor until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs.

2. Combine the crushed biscuits with the melted butter.

3. Press this mixture into the base and sides of a 20cm springform tin, and put in the fridge to chill and set for at least half an hour.

Butterscotch Sauce:
4. Place the extra butter, brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of the cream in a saucepan and combine over the stove until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Chocolate Sauce:
5. Place the chocolate and 2 tablespoons of cream in another saucepan and again combine the ingredients over the heats until the chocolate has melted.

6 Place the cream cheese and castor sugar in a bowl and beat using an electric beater until the mixture is smooth.

7. Add the chopped Mars bars to the cheese mixture and combine.

8. In another bowl, whip the remainder of the cream until soft peaks form.

9. Bring the water to the boil and take off the heat. Add the gelatine and stir until all the gelatine is dissolved. Let the mixture cool slightly, but do not let it set.

10. Add the gelatine mixture to the cheese mixture and stir well.

11. Fold in the cream.

12. Layer in half this cheese-cream mixture into the biscuit base prepared earlier.

13. Drizzle in half the chocolate and butterscotch sauces.

14. Repeat this process for the remainder of the cheese-cream mixture and sauces.

15. Cover the springform tin and place in the fridge to set. Leaving it overnight gives the best results.

Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of one of my awesome brothers... blame him for the DOF issues :P