Banana Loaf and Molten-Centered Chocolate Cupcakes

I have been wanting to make some sort of bread loaf since I got this book now, but I havent had a loaf tin, so this weekend we went to my favorite kitchen store here (Living and Giving), and bought a silicone one, as well as a new apron (yay!), as I havent had one up until now, and I am so glad that I do now. I make a huge mess when I bake, but isnt that the point anyway?!?!

Now that I have the loaf tin, I am going to be baking bread like crazy, and I started it out with banana bread. I love banana bread, and I have never made it myself, so what a perfect time to try! The only thing that I didnt like about the recipe in this book, was that it didnt have chocolate chips! What is this madness?!? Banana bread with no chocolate chips?! I dont think so! Ha, so I added some in, and I think that it turned out to be great! The only other issues I had with this recipe was that it called for white self-raising flour and brown self-raising flour, and the store only had white, so that is what I made the bread with. The recipe also called for demerara sugar, which I didnt know what that was. I did however find it at the store right away, so that worked out. And lastly, it called for rapeseed oil, which I thought I knew what it was (I was wrong) and I couldnt find it at the store, so I substituted it with grapeseed oil (though just maybe it was a typo), which turned out to not ruin the recipe, so it was okay. I found out later, though, that rapeseed oil is just canola oil (thanks to google), but it didnt seem to make too much of a difference.

The recipe said that it needed to bake for an hour, and then to check it and bake it longer if needed. Well it definitely wasnt done after an hour, but the top got a little burned (thanks to the tiny toaster oven), but overall, it took about an hour and 25 minutes, and the top was a little burned, but it was/is very yummy!



While the bread was baking, I was thinking that I still wanted to bake, so I went through the recipe book, looking for a recipe that called for ingredients that I had already. I know this is not the best way to look for a recipe, as I should have learned with the Sachertorte, but I did it anyway, and this time, it actually worked out okay.

They are called Molten-Centered Chocolate Cupcakes, and though you cant see in the picture, they have melted chocolate in the center (hence the name). It has butter, caster sugar, 1 egg, self-raising flour, cocoa powder, chocolate (I used dark chocolate), and icing or powdered sugar, just for dusting on the top. It was also a super easy recipe to mix, but the hard part came when putting it in the muffin tin. It said to put in half, then put the chocolate in, then put the rest on top of the chocolate, but easier said than done. The mixture was very sticky, and to make a divot in the mix in MINI muffin tins for the chocolate... not easy.

But, after I figured out how to work that out, they baked and they came out of the oven looking great, and they even tasted great. Matt came home and thought it was his birthday. He got banana bread, cupcakes (with his favorite - chocolate!) and some wine. It was a great evening for him, but I had to convince him to take pictures before he inhaled all the yummy treats! It was worth it I think. Dont those look so great with the powdered sugar? YUM!