Whip up Something New: Banana Cake and Vanilla Cupcakes

I had a blast cooking this weekend! Or baking, rather. Which means I have two recipes to talk about for January's edition of Whip up something new! and for Beth's Weekend Cooking. Yay me!

When I saw the first contribution ever to Whip up something new!, Elise's Old-fashioned Banana Cake, I immediately thought of the perfect occasion to try it - my Baby Shane's first birthday party! :-)

Yes, that's right, Shane is now officially a toddler - and toddle he does. The cake, with it's banana goodness and lots of moisture from the added sour cream - and let's not forget the cream cheese frosting - was a huge hit with kids and adults alike. Lovely for a Sunday afternoon, no matter what age group you've invited. Thanks Elise!

But - as you can from the photo, the banana cake is one of those 'proper' round cakes so I couldn't cut it open and see if it baked properly and all that... so I also made these vanilla cupcakes. It's a Martha Stewart recipe for plain cupcakes, which is just what I wanted. I frosted them with ready-made chocolate frosting and they were good, though not as good as the banana cake!

I am SO proud of myself for making Shane's first birthday cake from scratch. That's some serious Mommy behavior, I guess I'm growing into the part. :-)

Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter

This is the second book in the Gallagher Girls series and was in my gift package from my Secret Santa, along with the first one, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, which I read as soon as it arrived back in December but never reviewed. Now that I finished the second one and still want to continue with the series, I thought I'd write up some thoughts.

But first... thank you, thank you, thank you to my awesome Secret Santa, Kathrin from Secret Dreamworld of a Bookaholic! Kathrin looked through my wishlist and chose books that she loved herself, which I think is the perfect way to choose gifts. Kathrin, they were great choices, thank you so much!

Now on to the Gallagher Girls... they are not just ordinary girls. They go to a special privileged school, but it's not what sets them apart. The Gallagher Academy isn't for rich girls, it's for future spies! Yes, that's right, we're talking about teenage girl drama set in a spy school! How fun is that?

The characters are fun, the back stories are intriguing and even the simplest story lines become fresh when you add some spies-in-training, some family secrets and practice missions to the local town where the boy you like lives. Oh and I love the 'in-passing' mentions of some fantastic inventions that originated in the labs of the Gallagher Academy. And the mentions of some of the exciting things the teachers did when they were still working as spies. Not in too much detail obviously, a higher level of security clearance would be needed for that!

These books are light and great fun so if the mood strikes... indulge. I am - I just ordered the third one, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover. :-)

Challenges: 2011 Challenge

Weekend Cooking: Lemon chicken with chickpeas

I recently realized that, no matter how good our intentions, it's simply not possible for us to cook meals on weeknights. Which means that either we live on frozen convenience foods like 'fish and chips' or we get take aways. The only solution for us is to batch-cook at the weekend so that we have nice things to eat during the week.

Setting aside a few hours at the weekend for cooking doesn't always work, but we try. This weekend we managed and this lemon chicken with chickpeas is one of the things we made. This is my entry into this week's Weekend Cooking event hosted by Beth Fish Reads, as well as my first entry into January's Whip up something new! challenge. Did you make anything yummy this weekend? Blog about and post a link!

This came out very good and I'm looking forward to having it with some rice some evening this week. Plus it takes no time to make, such a plus! The recipe is out of my stash of pages torn out of magazines, though this one is glued into a notebook, inspired by Trish. It's likely to be from BBC Good Food magazine, I almost always buy that one.

Lemon chicken with chickpeas

Serves 4, suitable for freezing

1tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion, halved and thinly sliced
4 skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1 tsp each ground coriander and cumin
grated rind and juice of one lemon
400g can chickpeas, drained
200ml chicken stock
250g bag spinach

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the onion gently for 5 minutes. Turn up the heat, add the chicken and fry for 4 minutes, until golden. Stir in the spices and lemon rind, fry for one more minute, then tip in the chickpeas and stock. Put the lid on and simmer for 5 minutes. Season, then tip in the spinach and re-cover. Leave to wilt for 2 minutes, then stir. Squeeze over the lemon juice just before serving.