Brew a few cups of tea – bring to the boil in a saucepan with star anise and a cinnamon quill add your peeled pears and simmer for around 20 minutes – keep your eye on them – don’t over cook.

Serve with cream or chilled in the morning with Greek yogurt and some muesli.

You will see I haven’t cooked the pears with any sugar, I find the pears sweet enough but if you like your fruit a bit sweeter, add 1/2 cup of sugar to your poaching liquid.

Recipe adapted from Everyday Gourmet.

I am on a banana bread kick this week and didn’t want my gluten free friends to miss out!

What you’ll need:

3 Bananas (mashed)

2 eggs

1 ¼ cups of gluten free self raising flour

¾ cup of desiccated coconut

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence or extract

125g unsalted butter melted

1 cup of choc chips

In a large bowl mix together all ingredients, bake in a greased loaf tin for 1 hour at 180 degrees.   Serve warm with butter.

A slightly naughtier version of banana bread, especially nice served with soft butter.

2 cups of plain flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

125g softened unsalted butter

1 cup of caster sugar

4 ripe bananas, mashed

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 teaspoons of vanilla essence

1 cup of chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Grease a loaf tin.  Sift flour and baking powder into large bowl.  In another bowl beat the butter, sugar, mashed banana, eggs, vanilla and choc chips, add to dry ingredients and stir to combine.  Pour batter into tin and bake for 1 hour, check at 45 minutes with a skewer.  Leave to cool in tin for 5 minutes before removing to place on wire rack.

Recipe adapted from Country Women’s Association