Waitrose: The Everyday Kitchen

Episode 2: The Lost Art of Baking

Waitrose have been working with Mumsnet to produce a web TV series; demonstrating that quick and tasty culinary achievements can be an everyday feature in your kitchen despite the trials and tribulations of family life. 

Through the series we'll be offering you inspiration for your ingredients from Waitrose executive chef Neil Nugent and insights into gastronomic goodness with nutritionist Moira Howie. We'll be covering everything from how to take the stress out of Sunday lunch to quick and easy week-day meals.

Even with hectic lifestyles, people are taking a step back and discovering the lost art of baking, increasingly 'gifting' their time to others through presents of cakes and loaves of bread. However, if you're not a dessert chef and lack the confidence to step up to the plate, this week's episode has a few ideas to get you started.


                         

Here's the recipe and list of the ingredients if you fancy having a go yourself.

Thanks for submitting your hints and tips on this week's theme. Here are a few of our favourites:

• Cheese, roasted onion and thyme can be added to basic muffin recipes to make lovely savoury cupcakes (eat them warm and they are delish) but work well in fussy toddler's lunchboxes. whomovedmychocolate

• My daughter has a love/hate relationship with bananas and either adores or detests them on any given day so we often have a glut of overripe ones to use up. This is always great as it means I can make banana bread. It's 

really quick, can be just bunged in the oven and as I recently discovered when my scales broke you don't have to be too careful when measuring out ingredients as it always seems to work. 

I cream together about 75g marg or butter and 100g sugar (any, muscovado is nice if you've got it), beat in three eggs with a whisk, add three ripe mashed bananas and some vanilla extract if you have it, then sift in about 300g self-raising flour. Bake in a 190C oven for 50 mins (check a knife inserted comes out clean). A (relatively) healthy treat, also great toasted with butter for breakfast. munki

• If you are reviving the 'lost art' then definitely start with muffins. As long as you remember to combine all dry ingredients and then add all wet ones and mix carefully until just combined, you can't go wrong. They take five mins to mix (and you don't need an electric mixer) 20 mins to bake, are delicious, healthier than cakes, and way cheaper (and better) than bought muffins. 

Freeze (individually wrapped - I buy 'value' rolls of small food bags for this) any which don't get eaten immediately. Put them (still frozen) into lunchboxes and they will thaw in time for lunch, or microwave for 30 seconds for instant snacks.

..plus children like making them too! stealthquiggle

You can view the full thread here and congratulations to Lisad123 who has won £100 of Waitrose vouchers. Enjoy!

Looking for more recipes? Why not check out the Waitrose recipe library for more