The Big Fair Bake 2012 - Fairtrade Awareness

Baking tastes better when you share, so the Big Fair Bake is the perfect excuse to get inspired put on your pinny and bake up a treat for others; not just the friends and family we share it with, but also the farming communities who grew the ingredients.

Fairtrade tea, coffee, bananas, sugar, chocolate, cotton.... to name a few products that we all use daily and by switching to Fairtrade we can all make a difference, one step at a time.

I have chosen a recipe (Chocolate Orange Muffins) from the Fairtrade website here, but also added my own twist... to devise and bake a recipe using only Fairtrade ingredients... sort of like a "Ready, Steady, Cook" for the Fairtrade industry.... the last part of the challenge is to share my culinary creations and delights and share the message of Fairtrade.

Even though I live in a small town with little choice for supermarkets, I'm lucky that the main supermarket is the Co-Operative... in 2000 they developed and launched their own label range of Fairtrade products.  The ethics behind their products is great and they stock over 250 Fairtrade products, each displaying the Fairtrade badge to make them easily recognisable.

So, the ingredients that I can choose from are.... tea, coffee, chocolate, bananas, honey, sugar, beansprouts(!), wine, blueberries, pineapple, mangoes, oranges, grapefruits and lemons..... I'm not sure where the beansprouts will come in however my son loves them in a quick stir-fry...not with fruit salad though!  But, the wine will definitely be for drinking, no questions there!!

I'm thinking along the lines of "Banana tea bread muffins", "Chocolate blueberry muffins" and "Tropical fruit salad".  These delights will be created over the next couple of days and shared with family and friends... I'll publish the recipes to share with you all too...no secrets here!

Why don't you have a go... a simple fruit salad can provide your 5 a day and help the farmers at the source of the industry.... and everyone loves cake - Fairtrade just makes it better!

Ryvita Recipe Reviews (2)

Well, here's the second instalment of the fabulous recipes from Mark Sargeant & Ryvita.  They are both seasonal toppings for the crispbreads - the first as a light breakfast and the second as a light lunch.

Ryvita Fruit Crunch crispbread with banana, yogurt, honey, basil & passion fruit is a quick and easy light breakfast for a great start to your day.  I actually substituted the passion fruit for strawberries as, believe me, trying to find passion fruit in my small town was a major feat - a bit too tropical for a small Welsh town!  The passion fruit/strawberries are used to flavour the yogurt & make a simple coulis so any soft fruit you can get your hands on will work just fine... also it depends on the flavours you want to use for variety.  Next time I'm on my travels to the "big town", I will definitely pick up a couple of passion fruits to redo the recipe again!

 

The flavours of the fruits with the honey & basil fitted very well together and even my children (both under 8 years old) gave this the thumbs up!

The second recipe used the Mediterranean Herb Crispbread with Sardine Escabeche.  This recipe took a bit more in the way of preparation, with lots of thinly slicing to be done but it is worth the effort.  The marinade of red wine vinegar, orange, thyme, rosemary, bay, garlic, parsley & chilli gently pickles the fennel, carrot and onion and is lovely with the sardines... in fact, any oily fish would be great to use in this recipe.

I think this recipe is most suited to eating "al fresco" sat on a sun terrace on a warm afternoon... at the moment, a wet and windy Wales will have to do but it definitely gave a Mediterranean feeling to my afternoon.  The flavours from the crispbreads paint a perfect picture of the Med and the tastes most associated with the area.

I've really enjoyed working "with" Mark Sargeant - even if from afar!  But it has shown that a normal housewife and mum can create great looking and tasting foods in a normal kitchen with (mostly!) store cupboard ingredients!  "Come Dine With Me" here I come!

And of course, innovative ways to use the underestimated Ryvita Crispbread - a great source of fibre with great new flavours for family life!