A recent addiction to the Goodful Facebook feed has had me sampling new recipes. A flourless recipe for Banana Oatmeal muffins caught my eye.

Eager to try it, I decided to follow the recipe to the letter but by doing a straight substitution of honey in place of the maple syrup the original recipe calls for.

Ingredients

• 2 bananas
• 2 eggs
• ⅓ cup honey 
• ¼ teaspoon salt 
• 2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon 
• 1 cup Greek yogurt 
• 3 cups oats 
• 1 cup whole milk 
• Your preferred topping: healthy or otherwise (I chose to finish leftover Mackintosh's toffees from Halloween)

The full instructions, including a helpful video can be found on Buzzfeed.

A successful change of sweetener and a very yummy treat!

These Bite-Sized Banana Oatmeal Muffins Are Perfect For Snack Time

Tonight's invite to our friends Chris and Teresa's meant I dusted off an old favourite recipe I'd adapted from one given to me by my dietitian a good twelve or so years ago. This chicken recipe is always a popular item to have as entree or part of the buffet and I'm guaranteed a visit by my bestie if I let her know it's on the menu.

When I take this dish to a dinner party, I usually serve it warm as finger food and carry it between locations in a glass jar.

Instructions

For between one and two kilograms of chicken nibbles make a marinade using:

• 2 teaspoons of minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons of crushed ginger
• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade

You can choose to soak the nibbles in the marinade for a few hours in the fridge but I tend to simply stir the marinade through before I put the chicken in the oven.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Stir the marinade through the chicken until the nibbles are well coated before baking in the middle of the oven. I usually turn the chicken at twenty, thirty and then forty minute mark. On fan bake the chicken is usually cooked through at this point but I will leave it in, turning frequently until the moisture is gone and the glaze is sticky and golden/caramel.

Allow to rest before serving.

On Christmas Day, my mother requested that I make a dressing for the head of broccoli she was cooking. The dressing I came up with was very light and slightly sour on the finish which I like. The addition of honey and forgoing the salt mellows the acidity and makes a nice, slightly sweet variation to the original: probably suited to a wider range of palettes.

I've since made this broccoli and asparagus dish with the cranberry dressing a couple more times. Yum!!!

Today I served it warm for dinner with a couple of lamb roulades bought ready to bake from our local New World supermarket. The butcher took pains to let me know that the roulades have a new fig and pistachio stuffing. The two dishes were complementary and made my high protein, low carb meal extremely palatable and tasty!

As 4 minutes on high in the microwave and a couple of minutes for the dressing was all it took to prepare the vegetables, it's also a very quick meal. Great for busy households such as ours.

Instructions

Soften a head of broccoli and around ten asparagus spears: you can steam, toss in a frypan of boiling water or a few minutes on high in the microwave if you're in a hurry. Rinse the greens under cold water to stop the cooking and keep a little crunch.

Mix 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of honey with a generous handful of chopped, dried cranberries.

Pour the dressing over the greens and toss until the vegetables take on a glossy sheen. Serve warm straightaway with hot meat or allow to cool and serve as a salad.

If you prefer to plate up, like I do, be sure to use a spoon to scoop some of the dressing from the bottom of the bowl and drizzle over the vege! The cranberries atop the greens make a beautiful, polished finish to the plate.

Depending on what else is on the menu you may also like to add some roughly crushed almonds for additional texture.

I have a confession to make: I'm not really a fan of honey. As I've grown older my craving for sweet things has greatly reduced and even desserts are preferred which are only lightly sweet. So I'm definitely not one to have honey smeared on my toast in the morning. Did I mention I'm also not a bread person?

So what to do when you have access to buckets of liquid gold? You cook with it!

This Pear and Walnut Bake is so easy to prepare and oh so yummy! I made the recipe up on the fly when we were on holiday in Nelson and we were inspired to cook in the holiday house kitchen rather than eat out. With limited ingredients you make do with what's on tap.

Instructions

Simply spread olive oil on a baking dish and lay out quartered pears. Drizzle with more olive oil, a splash of white wine vinegar and glaze with honey. Sprinkle roughly broken walnuts on top. Bake in oven on a medium heat until soft: ensure you turn a few times and baste occasionally.

This is great with pork or chicken for the main meal - as demonstrated - or as dessert with cream, ice cream or custard.

Maintaining hives is a lot of effort: making and repairing frames is a time-consuming activity and something which takes a lot of hours out of the year. Building and repairing honeycomb is even more effort for the bees with seven times the energy required to make wax than honey!

So it's sensible that when we extract honey we rarely slice up any honeycomb despite several of our family and friends asking if they can nab some. We prefer instead to return emptied honeycomb to the bees to reuse and recover any honey that hasn't been removed from the extraction process.

Occasionally little mistakes - such as leaving a 3/4 height frame in a full-height box - means that the bees make honeycomb without foundation board and we have to cut it away anyway. Friday's extraction found a frame in just that situation. To the beekeepers goes the spoils! 

At least twice a year, over the Christmas period, I'm cajoled by the family to glaze a baked ham. I managed to find a recipe that works consistently well a few years ago in a New Zealand Healthy Food Guide and I've adapted with great success.

I usually make extra of the glaze and leave it to simmer a wee while to make a sauce for pouring over the ham. It also tastes great with new season boiled or steamed potatoes.

Instructions

For half a cooked ham (about 4.5kg) use:

• 1 cup of orange juice - I use any orange or orange-mix juice
• 0.5 cup of soft brown sugar
• 5 tablespoons of honey
• 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard - although I generally use 2 teaspoons of mustard powder instead

Mix the ingredients in a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until all the sugar has melted and then allow to simmer until it's a thick consistency.

Once you've peeled the skin off the ham leaving the fat layer, scored a diamond pattern into the fat and popped a clove into the centre of each diamond (although we tend to put the clove into the corners instead), simply use a silicon brush to coat the ham with the glaze. If you like to add pineapples, secure rings on the ham using toothpicks and repeat the coating process.

Place the ham in the oven at around 180 degrees Celsius. I tend not to use fan bake, preferring to let the baking go long and slow. I know some people like to put a bit of water at the bottom of the roasting pan but I generally find that if you don't use fan bake, the juice from the ham and the glaze keeps it sufficiently moist.

Pull the ham out every twenty minutes or so to repeat the glazing process. Two hours should ensure that the ham has a nice caramel sheen and is warmed right through. Allow to stand for 10 minutes before carving.