Quick & Easy Breakfast - SKIPPY Peanut Butter Banana Wrap #AD

The school term is upon us once again, and for many it's the first time their children have been back in the classroom since March. My two school age children have been lucky, and were in the year groups that welcomed pupils back before the end of the summer. My youngest is starting high school and will be catching the bus just after 8am, which will be a bit of a shock to the system after weeks of late nights, lay ins and leisurely breakfasts. I'm pretty sure that after a few early nights he'll settle into his routine and once again be an early riser, but I'm not so sure about myself. Leisurely mornings have been lovely, and some days I take full advantage of not having to start work until midday.

Some days, when there's not enough time for a bowl of cereal or toast, we might just be in need of a grab & go breakfast. I absolutely love love love peanut butter, and so do my kids (the husband says he can't stand it but manages to eat my home made chocolate peanut butter ice cream without any trouble!), so peanut butter is a go-to quick breakfast or snack for us, whether it's on a cracker, sliced apple or with a banana (sometimes spooned straight from the jar into the mouth!). When we have a little more time we love peanut butter on toast or crumpets with sliced apple, banana or strawberries on top - I can see you turning your nose up at this, but you seriously have to try it! Check out my TikTok which will be sure to make your mouth water!

@thecrazykitchen

SKIPPY Peanut Butter on crumpets 3 ways ##AD ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##SKIPPYPeanutButter ##strawberry ##apple ##banana ##peanutbutter ##breakfast

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On those rushed mornings, we will sometimes have a SKIPPY Peanut Butter banana wrap, as they are so quick to make, taste great, and are also very portable, so great for grabbing to go, especially if you make them the night before and keep them tightly wrapped in the fridge. They are so simple that I feel a bit of a fraud calling this a recipe, but sometimes some of the simplest ideas are a revelation to others, so I'm going with it. In this recipe I've added strawberry jam, because that PB & J combo really is good, as is ground cinnamon instead of the jam.

SKIPPY Peanut Butter has been enjoyed by millions of Americans for more than 80 years, and as the Super Chunk and Smooth varieties can be now found in most major UK supermarkets the UK can go nuts about SKIPPY Peanut Butter too. SKIPPY Peanut Butter is made only with high quality sweeter peanuts from the USA, and is a really good source of protein, providing 22.1g per 100g.

SKIPPY Peanut Butter Banana Wrap

1 Tortilla wrap

SKIPPY Peanut Butter - extra smooth or extra crunchy

Strawberry jam or cinnamon (optional)

Banana

• Lay the wrap on a plate or chopping board
• Spread generously with your chosen SKIPPY Peanut Butter
• Spread with strawberry jam or sprinkle with cinnamon, if using
• Lay your banana across the middle of the wrap - you may have to straighten it out a little
• Roll up tightly around the banana, using the SKIPPY Peanut Butter as glue to hold the wrap in place
• Slice in half at an angle 
• Warm up in the microwave for approx 20 seconds if you want the peanut butter to ooze out
• Drizzle with warmed peanut butter & EAT!

You can find more great SKIPPY Peanut Butter recipes on their website here.

Recipe commissioned by SKIPPY Peanut Butter

Chocolate & Banana Pinwheel Pastries

School holidays are a time when the kids eat us out of house and home. They seem to be always hungry and as they all get up a different times here, the kitchen is being used constantly to prepare food. Despite having plenty of food in the fridge and cupboards they're always complaining that there's no food, yet what they really mean is that there's no 'instant food', apart from toast, cereal & fruit, which they live off mostly when they have to fend for themselves.

These pinwheels can almost be classed as 'instant food' as they take very little time to prepare. They're also pretty simple to make so the kids can make them by themselves, and as the recipe makes so many of them there may even be enough to last a couple of days!

Enjoy a couple of these for breakfast with your morning cuppa, have a couple more with your picnic lunch, and then finish off the day with a couple of warm ones with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Strawberry & Banana Iced Lollies

I often go through phases of cooking and baking where I make the same thing over and over again, over a period of a few weeks. Recently it was flapjacks but at the moment it's iced lollies. 

Homemade lollies are great if you have kids, as it means you can add their favourite fruits and know exactly what's gone into them. It's also a great way to use up fruit that's perhaps past its best, that nobody wants to eat. Of course, you could just make a smoothie, but where's the fun in that. Just take it one step further and pour your smoothie into an ice lolly mould. It means that portions can be easily controlled, as well as preserving the fruit that little bit longer.

These are simply made by blending strawberries and bananas together. I had some strawberries in the freezer that I'd frozen when one of our allotment friends gave us two punnets a couple of weeks ago, and the bananas were looking a little ripe.

Strawberry & Banana Iced Lollies - makes approx 8 lollies

handful of fresh or frozen strawberries
1 banana

• add ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth
• pour into ice lolly moulds and place in the freezer for a few hours until frozen solid

Banoffee Apple Pie

This week is British Pie Week, and what better way to celebrate than with a big fat homemade apple pie. This one has a bit of a twist though as it's also loaded with bananas and caramel sauce. It's double crusted (no soggy bottoms here), with a light crisp and flaky pastry that's easier to make than puff pastry, and tastier than shortcrust.

    

Find the full recipe here

this recipe has been commissioned by Great British Chefs

Banoffee Bread & Butter Pudding

If you've got bananas that need eating up then I urge you to make this, it's so much better than banana bread, but it doesn't stick around for long. I made it with wholemeal sliced bread as that's what we have and the crusts needed using up,  but you can  use white bread, brioche or even croissants.

Banoffee Bread & Butter Pudding

6 wholemeal crust slices
50g butter
150ml Double cream
3 Eggs
150ml semi skimmed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp cinnamon 
100ml caramel sauce - I used home-made, however Carnation caramel or similar would work well
3 Bananas, sliced
2 tbsp Demerara sugar

• Butter the bread and then cut each slice into quarters
• Beat the cream with the eggs, milk, vanilla, 1 tsp of cinnamon & caramel sauce
• Butter a medium shallow baking dish
• Lay half of the bread sliced in the bottom
• Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of cinnamon over the bread
• Lay half of the banana slices over the bread
• Repeat with the remaining bread, cinnamon & banana
• Pour the liquid over the bread & banana and press down gently with the back of a fork
• Cover & leave for 30 minutes for the liquid to soak into the bread
• Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top
• Bake in a preheated 160 C oven for 30-35 minutes, until puffed up and golden

Serve with extra sauce and ice cream

Chocolate Banoffee Celebration Cake

Twelve years ago today I became a Mum for the first time. Over those very fast twelve years my baby boy has gone from this

to this.

A birthday wouldn't be a birthday without a cake so today I've been making one for Sam, he specifically asked for caramel crunch chocolate fingers and no vegetables! Here's what I made

Chocolate Banoffee Celebration Cake

3 small bananas, mashed (approx 250g)
150g butter, softened
225g soft brown sugar
4 eggs
225g Self Raising flour
40g Cocoa powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• Beat the banana, butter & sugar together
• Add the eggs, one at a time with a little of the flour with each egg
• Sift in the remaining flour with the cocoa powder & bicarbonate of soda
• Divide mixture between two 8" sandwich tins & bake in a 180 C oven for approx 25 minutes
• Remove from tins & cool on a wire rack

Filling, Topping & Decoration

100g Toffees
1 tbsp boiling water
400g Full Fat Cream cheese
220g Dark chocolate spread
1 small banana, thinly sliced
3 boxes of Cadbury's Caramel Crunch chocolate fingers
8 Cadbury's Caramel miniatures

• Melt the toffees & water in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water
• When melted, beat until smooth & remove from the heat
• Beat in the 100g of the cream cheese & set aside
• Beat the remaining cream cheese with the chocolate spread
• Spread half of the caramel over the base of one of the cooled sponges & lay slices of banana on top
• Spread the other half of the caramel over the base of the other sponge and sandwich them together
• Cover completely with the chocolate topping & arrange fingers around the sides
• Decorate with the remaining fingers and halved chocolate caramels

(I've just double checked & I definitely put 12 candles on the cake...one of them must have been hiding!)

Cooking With Your Toddler - Banana Cake

I tweeted at the weekend about how I had a bit of an online shopping fail - instead of ordering 10 individual bananas I managed to order 10 bags of bananas!


Tesco thankfully managed to re-route a driver later that evening to call and collect some of the excess bananas,leaving us with only 4 bags. We managed to munch our way through most of them before they became over-ripe and decided to use the rest to make some banana cake/bread with Jack. Along with as his apron and chefs hat set Dunelm also sent Jack a Tala Child's baking set to try out so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. The set comes with an extremely cute 12cm springform cake tin, a mini spatula, mechanical timer and squeezy icing bottle.

The spatula was the perfect size for Jack to handle and has a flexible end, great for scraping bowls - or the dregs in your peanut butter or jam jar. The timer is easy to operate and can time from 1 minute up to an hour - great for baking or setting time limits on the Xbox or naughty step!


The pan is the cutest pan I have ever seen, it's a dinky version of a full-size springform pan, with a loose bottom. This is a great size for making a cake for the kids tea, especially if you're like me & on a permanent diet and don't wish to have cakes lying around for fear of not being able to resist them! There will definitely not be any left-overs when using this pan.


We didn't get around to using the icing bottle but I'm sure it will appear in future posts. The Tala baking set is available from Dunelm at a very reasonable £8.99, great for kids presents or stocking fillers.


If you haven't entered already, don't forget to enter my competition to win an apron & chefs hat set like Jack is wearing.




Banana Cake


125g butter, melted & cooled
350g SR Flour
175g Golden Caster Sugar
2 tbsp Smooth Peanut Butter
2 tsp Cinnamon
2 Eggs, beaten
3 Large over-ripe bananas, peeled & mashed
tbsp Milk

• Mix all the ingredients  together until combined.
• Spoon mix into greased & lined large loaf pan or 2 smaller pans
• Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife or metal skewer inserted comes out clean. If you are using 1 large loaf pan you may need to bake for around 50-60 minutes.
• Allow to cool slightly in the pan and then remove and place on a wire rack to cool completely

Variation

After we had divided the mix up between our loaf pan and small springform pan we had some mix left over and added some chocolate chips and fudge pieces and baked them in mini cupcakes cases.

Come and share your own 'Cooking with your Toddler' experiences - just add your post to the Linky below