Banana Oat Cookies

This is a fantastic recipe to use up any spare bananas you have lying around and more importantly they taste amazing!
They taste even better the next day as the flavours are given time to develop.

The Ingredients:
150g Butter
200g Dark Brown Sugar
120g Mashed Banana
150g NEILL'S® Plain Flour
250g Porridge Oats
1.5tsp Ground Cinnamon
2tsp Vanilla Extract
1tsp Bicarbonate Soda
1 Egg

The How-To:
Preheat oven to 170c
Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Beat in the mashed banana.
In a separate bowl sieve the flour, bicarbonate soda, salt and cinnamon together.
Add this flour mix to the banana batter.
Stir in the oats
Drop heaped tablespoons of the batter onto baking sheets. About 4 per sheet is plenty as they spread a little.
Bake in the centre of the oven for 10 mins.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 mins before removing to completely cool on a cooling rack.

You're Done!

Cinnamon Bears

This is a fab and easy recipe to make with kids! You can use any cookie cutters but we love to use teddy bear cutters for this recipe. This is a brilliant cinnamon biscuit recipe to use all year round, just change the cookie cutters to suit the occasion.

 The Ingredients:
145g NEILL'S® Plain Flour
145g NEILL'S® Self Raising Flour
1 Egg
130g Butter
100g Caster Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Extract
3tsp Ground Cinnamon




The How-To:
Preheat oven to 160c.
Line a baking tray with baking paper or spray with a little non stick spray.
In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together.
Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until well combined.
In another bowl sieve the flours together along with the ground cinnamon.
Mix the flour mix into the butter mix stirring well.
Once the mixture comes together into a dough, lightly flour the worktop and knead the dough a little to bring everything together.
Lightly flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out to about 0.5cm thick. Use your favourite cutter to cut out some shapes. **Top Tip - Peel away the excess dough from around the cut out shapes and then gently lift with a flat knife or palette knife**
Place on the baking tray, they only expand a little bit so can be placed quite close together.
Bake in the centre of the oven for 15 mins, they will still be a little soft when they come out but will crisp up as they cool.

You're Done!

Cherry Bakewell Inspired Cake

Cherry bakewell tarts are something many of us enjoy with a passion. This cake is inspired by some of these favourite flavours.

The Ingredients:
175g Caster Sugar
175g NEILL'S® Self Raising Flour
175g Butter
3 Eggs
2tsp Almond Extract/Essence

3tbsp Ground Almonds

1/4 Jar of Seedless Strawberry/Raspberry Jam



The How-To:
Preheat oven to 160c.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
Add the eggs to the mix one by one ensuring each is combined before adding the next.
Stir in the almond extract/essence and fold in the ground almonds.

Fold in the flour.
Pour into two 8 inch cake tin lightly greased and lined with baking paper.
Bake for 30 mins or until when a skewer entered comes out clean.
Allow to cool before spreading the jam on one half, sprinkle a little extra ground almonds on top of the jam if you wish.

Set the second half on top of the bottom and spread more jam on top.

Can be refrigerated for 10-15 mins to firm up the jam a little.

You're Done

Strawberry Fields Foods Jams

Strawberry Fields Foods is owned and run by two very smart cookies Lauren & Kirstie.

Lauren & Kirstie use the resources at hand in Dorset and the New Forest, England to create some splendidly tasting jams and curds.

Setting an example to us all, they use local ingredients which vastly reduces the food miles for the ingredients which they use. In fact they get most of the ingredients from the farm next door and even grow some themselves, you can't get much fresher than that! If you don't know what food miles are this Wikipedia article does a pretty good job at explaining them.

Lauren & Kirstie believe in a 'Fruitier jam for all', a concept we certainly can't disagree with! This results in all their jams being jam packed (see what we done there!? ;) ) with as much fruit as they can fit in so the name 'extra' gets added to the jams' names, Strawberry Extra, Raspberry Extra... You get the picture.

Packed full of juicy fruity flavour these jams are truly made with a lot of love and passion. Whether its smothered on hot buttery toast, served on some of our freshly baked miniature cherry scones or topping one of our cake recipes (don't worry we'll be writing another one very soon for you to use these jams with!) these jams are simply a delight!

You can find Strawberry Fields Jams on Love Your Larder. Or to buy a gift set like the one we pictured you can email them direct.