Now it's the first of December I think I can officially get Christmassy! Last week I was preempting the festivities by baking some chocolate cakes and adding some snowflake sprinkles!

Simple Mills are one of my favourite baking mixes when I want a quick bake. With all natural ingredients and being free from gluten, dairy and soy, these mixes are great for most dietary requirements.

Simple Mills mixes can be found on Make it Gluten Free Ltd's website and this particular pack retails at £5.20 and claims to make 12 muffins, although mine made 15, which after eggs and flavourings makes these about 50p a muffin. Which I think isn't too unreasonable!

To make these muffins all you need is eggs, oil and vanilla flavouring. Mix these together and then slowly incorporate the dry mix. Then bake until risen, which takes 20-30 minutes and that's all there is to it! The whole process only takes about 40 minutes.

In terms of frosting, I used a butter and cream cheese mix, of course these can be swapped for dairy free alternatives to create the same affect. In a bowl put 300g icing sugar, 50g butter, 125g cream cheese and 1/2-3/4 cup cocoa powder, depending on how chocolatey you would like it. You can also add some vanilla, but as there is quite a bit in the cake mix, I decided not to. Then just mix until it's a smooth icing. Spread or pipe onto the cakes. In the move I had misplaced my piping bags so I had to spread the icing this time! Then add sprinkles! Done!

I would say that these muffins do need a frosting to prevent them tasting too dry as the cupcake itself is quite dark in flavour. The icing gives it the lift it needs and if I had any I think they would have looked great with some edible glitter to finish them! Everything is better with a bit of glitter!

If you have baked this mix in any of the other ways suggested on the pack, I would love to know what you thought!

Hannah x

*This product was gifted to me to try, all opinions are my own

As you may have seen, Make it Gluten Free Ltd sent me some mixes to try a few weeks ago. We decided to bake something a little bit eastery as there is only a couple of days to go! When I think of Easter I imagine fresh foods, fruits and vegetables (as well as lots of chocolate of course!) So what would be better than baking some banana muffins? I dug out the Simple Mills banana muffin mix and found some easter cupcake cases and toppers from Poundland to decorate and headed to the kitchen!

Like all of the mixes from the Simple Mills brand, all of the ingredients are natural and the mixes are really easy to make. For this all you need is water, oil and two eggs. Just mix the wet ingredients, then add the dry, bake for 30 minutes and that's it!

The ingredients within this non GMO mix are; almond flour, organic coconut sugar, arrowroot powder, organic coconut flour, bananas, aluminium-free baking soda and sea salt. Being a 'clean' list of ingredients, these mixes are perfect for a range of allergies. I am sure you can trial an egg replacer to make the finished product free from egg too, as well as gluten, soy and dairy!

Once out of the oven, the muffins are soft, fluffy and have a beautiful texture. I didn't add extra banana as suggested to make it extra banana-y this time, but it didn't really need any more than what is in the mix already as the flavour really stood on its own. Predominantly almond flour, this mix is quite dark in colour but as it baked, the colour turned much lighter and brighter.  

I found that the flavour of these muffins were very fresh, as if it was made with real bananas, straight from the fruit bowl. I tested these out on three gluten eaters and they all loved them too!

Perfect for children, this mix is easy to bake, and would be perfect to decorate for an Easter activity in the half term! Why not experiment by adding cinnamon or chocolate chips?


Hannah x

*This product was sent to me to try, all opinions are my own.