Do you remember the time when citrus fruit sailed from Cuba to Poland? We kept a close eye on the news about it and impatiently waited for the delivery to the shops. Today this fruit is in the markets all year round and sometimes, unfortunately, it is forgotten and left to ripen in the cupboard. Today was another time when I had to use up the bananas, because nobody wanted to eat them. I think we should wave goodbye to bananas. I will wait until my son asks me for some. Only then will I buy them.

But where one door shuts, another opens. The very ripe bananas were an ingredient of yummy muffins with small pieces of chocolate. I found the recipe in the Lidl cookery book. In the original recipe the muffins were decorated with chocolate crème. I sprinkled them with caster sugar and cocoa.

Ingredients (12 muffins)
3 ripe bananas
100 g of butter
150 g of brown sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
260 g of flour
100g of dark chocolate
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar

Crumble is simply fruit under a topping. You may use almost any fruit and depending on the season you can have a yummy dessert or a dish for afternoon tea. You have to be careful with the temperature of the dish. The cool crumble topping may conceal very hot fruit lava.

I have already made apple crumble with a classic crumble topping (which we use for yeast cake), rhubarb and strawberries under a coconut crumble topping, and today I prepared oat crumble with pineapple and apples. I added a bit of maple syrup to the crumble topping so it had a slightly caramel taste. I served it with vanilla yoghurt sauce, but it is also excellent without it.

Ingredients (for 5 people)
half a pineapple
4 apples
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
1 tablespoon of butter
crumble topping
100g of rolled oats
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
100g of butter
2 tablespoons of wholemeal flour
2 tablespoons of sesame seeds

Sweet dumplings with cottage cheese or fruit remind me of summer holiday dinners. Because I'm fed up with winter, warm clothes, thick shoes and salted pavements, I decided to conjure a new reality by preparing a summer dinner.

Almost everybody likes sweet dumplings, and we can tempt even the fussiest eaters with them. Today I prepared them with brewed dough, and I know that from now on I will never do them any other way. Brewed dough is malleable, easy to roll, binds perfectly and doesn't fall apart during cooking. Today I prepared a classic version of sweet dumplings with a hint of vanilla and cream. You can add fruit, chocolate or sprinkle them with cinnamon or sugar. Everybody has their own beloved type of dumplings.

Ingredients:
dough:
500g of flour
4 tablespoons of oil
250-300 ml boiling water
a pinch of salt
stuffing:
500g of cottage cheese
300g of cream
4 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar