These are a few of my favourite things

Baking and sunshine, sunshine and baking…probably my two bests in the whole world. Apart from maybe a very good margarita on a lovely evening with lovely friends. We're a week back from our yearly soaking of Vitamin D at my mama's beautiful little homestead in Spain. Whilst we were there we had a little birthday bash for my mama - al fresco pasta and sangria with the neighbours, who all brought drums and guitars and friends and kept us dancing under the shooting stars. I made a cake (of course), and took the excuse to make one I've been wanting to try out for ages. The original recipe is from the gorgeous Deliciously Ella, and I altered it slightly….and also somehow managed to make it without the luxury of a food processor, so mine was a bit lumpier but just as divine. It's completely gluten/sugar/dairy free and there wasn't a crumb left uneaten…I promise it tasted totally incredible. It's also quick and easy to make. Total winner.

Smug Chocolate & Strawberry Birthday Cake 

for the cake
5ish small sweet potatoes 
2 cups ground almonds
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup gluten free self raising flour (I like Dove's Farm)
1 cup medjool dates (pitted)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup maple syrup
4 tbsp raw cacao
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 vanilla bean
pinch of salt

for the icing
5 ripe avocados 
1 very ripe banana
1 cup medjool dates (pitted)
3 tbsp raw cacao
3 tbsp maple syrup
2 cups strawberries
handful of almond flakes
edible flowers and desiccated coconut (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Peel the sweet potatoes, chop into chunks and steam for about 20 mins, until they are really soft. In a large bowl, mix the ground almonds, flours, cacao, cinnamon and salt and set aside. 

Prepare the icing by blitzing all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth and creamy. Or, in my case, pop them in some strange manual chopper and attempt to blitz them until they are as un-lumpy as you can manage… Pop the icing into a bowl, cover and keep in the fridge. 

Place the soft, slightly cooled sweet potatoes, dates, vanilla bean seeds (scraped from the pod - discard the pod), maple syrup & water into a food processor or blender, and blend until smooth. Stir this into the dry ingredients until well combined. Prepare three 8" cake tins (I actually think this would be rad even taller in 6" tins, but that might just be me) by brushing with coconut oil and lining with parchment circles. 

Sitting in the hot hot sun whilst you mix the cake is optional but really helps, I find...

Spoon the batter into three separate tins (I like to measure it out with scales to make sure all three have an even amount) and bake for about 20 mins, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tins 20 mins, then invert onto a cooling rack until completely cool. 

Chop your strawberries and layer your cake with strawberries and the creamy chocolate frosting. I sprinkled some lightly toasted slivered amends and desiccated coconut between the layers too, and topped the cake with more of those plus some yummy edible flowers. Keep in the fridge until serving. ENJOY! God I want to eat it again, right now… 

cookie monster

Nom

I've been being all January and taking a long, hard look at our eating habits. It's so easy with kids to slip into a routine where every meal is based around wheat and cow's milk, the two things we are supposed to try and have less of. Not to mention the horrible hidden sugar in everything from bread to baked beans. So it's been a month of learning new, quick recipes and making things from scratch, and actually it's been really fun. I got this fab Gwyneth Paltrow cook book, which is full of super fast, mega tasty family friendly meals and snacks. I must have made about 15 of the recipes so far and have yet to be disappointed. I know, I know, everyone loves to roll their eyes at Gwyneth - and she invites it, to a degree, with the inclusion of phrases such as "Like a prize, a perfectly ripe avocado emerged from Gwyneth's carry-on" errrm - but I bloody love her, especially for this book. Seriously. Try it. 

I've been loving the soups, the endless avocado and quinoa feasts, but sometimes you need a cookie. Especially if you are a hyperactive smalley. Or a little boy with a lunchbox. So today Indy and I baked up a batch of invented biscuits, and they were so completely delicious that I had to share… 

Raring to go...

Monster biscuits

110g gluten-free plain or self raising flour (we use Dove's Farm)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
75ml coconut oil
3 tbsp raw honey
75ml maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
grated zest of half an orange 
50g oats
50g grated carrots
50g raisins
1 mashed banana

Mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl, and set aside. In a big bowl, mix the coconut oil, honey, maple syrup and vanilla. Try not to let your toddler eat it all at this stage - this is the most challenging bit of this recipe. Add the egg, the orange zest & mashed banana and give it a good mix.

Next add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until well incorporated. Then mix in the oats, raisins and grated carrot. Indy was pretty into pinching these out of the bowl too… Once all is mixed, add dollops (approx 1 tbsp) to a cookie sheet - ours is nonstick (but a bit haggard) and we didn't bother greasing it, which worked out fine.  Bake at 170C for 12 minutes, then place on a rack to cool. 

Having made this kind of "healthy" biscuit before, with varying degrees of success, I wasn't expecting them to be so incredibly tasty. They were soft and sweet and tasted like the best home made oatmeal raisin cookies I've had. And they were quick to make, and a fun activity with a crazy toddler. Hopefully Gwyneth would approve, too… 

Biscuit Brigade

This blog has been like a ghost town since my last post, which promised a website reveal and cronuts recipe that never materialised. The shame! I promise they are both on the horizon, and will appear one day before the year's end. In the meantime I've been up to my armpits in cake orders and small children, and haven't even checked an email for actual weeks. However, I've been shocked out of my sugar rush by the realisation that Christmas is hurtling towards me. It's just one month away, and I've not even thought about all the festive fun I want to cram in before I wake up in a sea of Quality Street wrappers on the 27th to the harsh realisation that life is once again devoid of reason for overeating, over-baking, random platters of large cheeses and general overindulgence in port. 

So it was that we kicked things off with a gingerbread party! I thought it would be fun to add a bit of nutrition to balance the treacle, and so we attempted the following, which I stumbled upon via this site. 

Spelt and Agave Gingerbread

330g spelt flour 
.5 tsp salt
.75 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
.25 tsp ground nutmeg
.25 tsp ground cloves
113g unsalted butter
1 large egg
80ml agave syrup
80ml treacle/molasses

(if you prefer your gingerbread lighter in colour, use golden syrup in place of treacle)

some of the treacle actually made it into the dough...

The dough is so easy to make that the kids did it all themselves, bar the weighing and measuring, and despite devouring dangerous amounts of treacle along the way it came together perfectly. Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl, and all the wet (including butter) in another, then just stir them together, at some stage transferring from spoon to hands to squish it all into a ball. We then left ours in the fridge overnight, but you would want to leave it for at least half an hour as otherwise it's too sticky to work with. 

Cutter-sorting kept her busy for almost an hour! Coup!

Next day we had besties Edie & Holly coming over for a dinner date, so we planned a gingerbread baking party beforehand and the kids went to town making some fabulous gingery creations. Roll the dough out to about 5mm thickness, cut your desired shape, then pop on a parchment-lined tray in the oven (170C) for approx 10 minutes. We decorated ours first, with varying degrees of success, with pumpkin seeds, raisins, sugar crystals and bits of orange peel. You could also ice with basic royal icing and sprinkles after they are cooked and cooled, which I did a tiny bit of before losing interest and just eating them. The pumpkin seeds were super yummy baked into the gingerbread. It was lovely to watch the kids really get into decorating - Indy and Holly, despite being the littlest, really focussed on making pretty designs. It took them ages to catch on to the fact that the dough was edible, at which point we had to step in and confiscate it… Such a lovely activity from start to finish, that the kids can really just take over with and isn't hideously messy. Needless to say we all enjoyed devouring them afterwards too…