Banana and coconut cupcakes

Unless you're going to disguise your dairy and gluten-free cakes with chocolate, sweets and icing, four year-olds aren't going to be the easiest audience to please. My nephew turned four yesterday and I wanted to bake him some little cakes to share with his home education group. As his mother is keen for him to avoid too much sugar and fat, the chocolate/sweets/icing option was out. In the end I opted for banana and coconut cupcakes. Most kids love bananas and the coconut milk makes the cakes very moist and incredibly moreish. My nephew ate three cupcakes so I guess they were a hit.

Makes 16 cakes
Ingredients

200g of gluten-free flour
3 bananas, mashed with a fork
2/3 cup of coconut milk
4 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon of baking powder
pinch of salt
160g of unrefined caster sugar
160g of dairy-free margarine
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1. Set your oven to 180C.
2. Cream together the margarine and the sugar.
3. Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the mixture.
4. Then add the egg yolks, followed by the coconut milk and vanilla extract.
5. Once this is all mixed together add the mashed banana.
6. Finally, whisk the egg whites together and then fold into the mixture.
7. Pour the mixture into cupcake cases. Each case should be 3/4 full.
8. Bake for twenty minutes.

Mango curry

When you have a couple of food intolerances, you often worry that you'll be unable to eat other foods too. Spices have always concerned me; if my stomach doesn't like milk or bread, why would it like curry? Luckily my fears have been unfounded and, since meeting my intrepid husband, I've been experimenting with spice. Last night I tried my hand at a mango curry with fish. I didn't have a recipe but I did have a cupboard full of spices brought back from Indian so the end result was good. If you are vegetarian or want to lay off fish for an evening, you could add more sweet potato to bulk it out.

Ingredients (Serves four)
One can of organic coconut milk
One celery stem chopped
One large onion finely chopped
Three cloves of garlic chopped
One large sweet potato cubed
Five tomatoes, cut in half
A large handful (or half a punnet) of chesnut mushrooms sliced
One large ripe mango, cubed
A bunch of fresh coriander
One teaspoon of cumin seeds
Half a teaspoon of grounder coriander
Half a teaspoon of tumeric
Half a teaspoon of cinnamon
One teaspoon of Indian chili powder
750g of white fish. cut into thick strips

First fry the onions in oil. I would avoid a strong oil like olive and opt for groundnut or sunflower oil instead.
When they start to soften add the garlic and then add the cumin seeds. Mix well into the onions and garlic and fry for two minutes.
Then add the other spices and fry for two more minutes.
Then the mushrooms and the celery for cook a further three or four minutes. Once the celery has started to soften add the sweet potato and the tomatoes.
Give it a couple more minutes and then pour in the can of coconut milk and half a cup of water. Add half the fresh coriander, cover and lower the heat. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.
Then slip in the mango and, five minutes later the fish.
Once the fish has turned white, it's ready to serve. You don't want to cook the fish for too long otherwise it will fall apart.
Serve with rice and some more chopped coriander on top.