Fair Food

Make some fairtrade muffins to celebrate Fairtrade fortnight

Banana & Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes 7-8 large muffins.

Ingredients

100g plain flour
40g cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
90g unrefined (golden) Fairtrade sugar
40g melted butter
1 egg, beaten
2 ripe Fairtrade bananas, well mashed
80ml buttermilk
50g Fairtrade milk chocolate, chopped into small chunks

Method

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Sieve flour, cornmeal, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together into a large bowl. Stir in sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the butter, egg, bananas and buttermilk. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix gently (do not over-mix). Fold in the chocolate chips. Fill a muffin tin (ideally lined with muffin cases) to just under the rim. Bake for about 30 minutes until golden-brown and firm to the touch. Allow to cool in the tin.

Bananas

Yellow clad banana eaters will congregate in Trafalgar Square at 11.30 on Saturday morning for the finale of a world record challenge. Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK will be “going bananas” from noon on Friday 6 to noon on Saturday 7 March. Each person will eat one banana in an attempt to break the world record for the greatest number of people eating a Fairtrade banana in 24 hours.

Fairtrade sales soar despite downturn

The Fairtrade Foundation announces today that UK sales reached an estimated retail value of more than £700m in 2008, a 43% increase over 2007. 

A report released today The Global Food Crisis and Fairtrade: Small farmers, big solutions?  emphasises the escalating plight of farmers in developing countries as prices soar. “The food situation is really bad.  Apart from times of calamities such as drought, this is the most difficult time we’ve known with these high food prices”, says Joseph Mbusa, of the Mubuku Moringa Vanilla Farmers Association in Uganda.

Harriet Lamb welcomed record UK Fairtrade sales saying:  ‘We’re delighted to be able to report growth of 43% in Fairtrade sales, keeping us on track with our plan to double the impact of Fairtrade by 2012. In the current global economic climate, farmers need Fairtrade more than ever.”

Fairtrade can offer support but can’t do enough alone. More help is needed from NGOs, governments and other international organisations.

Fairtrade Fortnight begins this Monday 23 February.