Marathon breakfast cakes

I had half a jar of apple sauce left in my fridge and thought I ought to do something with it. Either I did a big roast pork dinner or I made marathon breakfast cakes – not that I’m planning on running a marathon but you don’t have to be running a marathon to enjoy these cakes. Much as I like roast pork, I figured that I would still not use up half a jar of apple sauce, especially since I’m the only one in the family who would contemplate having apple sauce with my pork, so marathon breakfast cakes it was to be.

There’s a nice recipe for breakfast cookies in the New York Marathon Cookbook, although I still wouldn’t call them cookies, they are more like cakes. However, as usual, I didn’t actually have all the ingredients.

Firstly, I didn’t have enough apple sauce (you need 3/4 cup), but I did have an over-ripe banana. Also I didn’t have any oatmeal or margarine; I swapped these for wheat germ and butter. The wheat germ is actually very good for you containing vitamin E, folic acid, phosphorous, thiamin, zinc, magnesium, essential fatty acids, essential fatty alcohols and, of course, fibre. The butter might not be quite so good for you but you could use margarine (as in the original recipe) or it would probably work with any other suitable oil.

I measured everything, except the butter, using cups because I have this really nice set of cup measures (given to me by my sister-in-law) and that makes it really easy. However, for your convenience, I looked up the conversion to grams so that you can weigh the ingredients if you don’t have cup measures. So, here’s what you need.

• 75g or 1/3 cup of butter (I normally zap this in the microwave for a bit to soften it)
• 100g or 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 banana (relatively large and relatively ripe)
• 135g or 1/2 jar apple sauce (as stated above, the original recipe had 3/4 cup and no banana and that would be about 190g)
• 60g or 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 30g or 1/2 cup wheat bran
• 30g or 1/4 cup milk powder
• 1 egg (luckily no cup to gram conversion to look up for that one!)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp (or a bit less) salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 100g or 3/4 cup plain flour
• 75g or 1/2 cup dried fruit (I used mixed dried fruit but the original recipe just had raisins)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C, 350F, Gas Mark 4
2. Cream together the butter and the sugar
3. Mash in the banana
4. Mix in the apple sauce
5. Add in all the other ingredients, leaving the dried fruit until last
6. Drop tablespoonsfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray, it should make 12.
7. Bake for 12-15 min
8. Cool in the tin for a bit then finish the cooling on a cooling rack

The cakes were surprisingly light and tasted great. I didn’t really notice the banana flavour though but I only added the banana because I didn’t have enough apple sauce and I had a banana going black in the fruit bowl – not for its fine flavour! The cakes also had a really nice texture. In the original recipe they suggest putting cream cheese between two and making a sandwich. You can also freeze them. I’ve made them without the dried fruit before (my kids don’t like raisins in cakes) and put them in the kid’s lunch boxes and then it’s really useful to freeze them and just get them out of the freezer as required.

So, no running today, I’m still not really well. I’m OK, just a bit under the weather but it’s a pity to miss the parkrun. However, I didn’t actually wake up until 8:30 so it would have been a bit of a push to get to the start-line on time.

If you missed my running podcast this week, you can listen to it on Spreaker (click here) or it’s available on iTunes, search for Maggie’s running podcast.