Baked Blackberry, Blueberry & Coconut Crunch Oatmeal

Baked Blueberry, Blackberry & Coconut Oatmeal

Reading this blog, you’d be forgiven for thinking my husband and I live on sweet treats alone. The occasional loaf of bread maybe, but mostly cookies, cakes, brownies, pies and pastry. Looking at the recipes I post, people have been known to ask why neither of us is the size of a house with all this available on a daily basis. The answer, I’m afraid, is that it isn’t.

I bake for special occasions, birthdays and celebrations. The food we eat on the weekend, on holiday and when friends come over is indulgent – these are the recipes I post and which, of course, we eat every last bit of – but during the working week it’s mostly about health in the little loaf household. Green smoothies, eggs and oats are on regular breakfast rotation, I make up fresh batches of salads for our packed lunch each day and our evening meal is always made from scratch with a good balance of protein, vegetables and grains.
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Gingerbread Marshmallows

Gingerbread MarshmallowsUntil pretty recently, I thought my marshmallow eating days were long gone.

As a child, I thought they were awesome. Soft on the outside with a sweet, slightly chewy middle, marshmallows came big or small, pink or white (purely aesthetic with no nod to flavour as far as I can recall). My friends and I would buy penny twists with our pocket money, melt larger ones down to make the gooiest rice krispie treats or thread them on sticks before scorching over an open fire. Continue reading

Wholemeal Maple Pumpkin Pie with Salty Sweet Pumpkin Seeds

Maple Pumpkin Pie, Wholemeal Spelt Crust

Seasonal baking is something that often seems to pass me by. Although I’ll eat the occasional mince pie (mostly for the pastry and an excuse to eat an extra spoonful of brandy butter), I’m not the biggest fan of mincemeat, while boozy Christmas pudding, marzipan-filled Simnel cake or stollen leave me pretty cold.

Rewind the calendar a month or so and Halloween, for me, has always been about the bags of sweets gleaned from a trick-or-treating spree rather than any great tradition of pumpkin-based treats. Not surprising then, perhaps, that until last week I’d never eaten, let alone attempted to make, a pumpkin pie. Continue reading

Our Wedding

Kate & Luke outside

On 31st August 2013 I married my best friend, soulmate and partner in crime. And regardless of how often it’s been said and of all the clichés it evokes, I can honestly say it was the best day of my life. So far, anyway: we’re in this together now and I’ve got a pretty good feeling there are even more amazing things yet to come.

Nearly nine years of being in love, our incredible families, a whole host of the best friends a boy and girl could ask for, a venue that dreams are made of, amazing food and more emotion than I can begin to describe are pretty much impossible to condense into words. So here are a few photos.

Suffice to say I’ve never smiled so much in my life. And I haven’t stopped yet. Back with a recipe next week xx. Continue reading

Fig & Almond Crumble Cake

Fig Crumble Cake

Despite being a classic dish from childhoods across generations and around the country, crumble isn’t something I’m tempted to make that often.

Growing up with an apple-farmer for a granny, crumble was (unsurprisingly) always made using fruit from her farm and there’s something about the texture of stewed apple that I’m just not that keen on. Whenever a crumble was served, I’d accept the portion offer, add extra ice cream then proceed to eat my way through the crunchy oat crust, leaving a lonely pile of fruit at the bottom of my bowl. Continue reading

Apple Syrup Sweetened Pumpkin Spice Granola

Pumpkin granolaTowards the end of last week, autumn arrived in earnest. Until then, it felt a little like we were living on borrowed time: sunny days and warmth that extended into the evenings even after darkness had fallen (and did so increasingly earlier every day). In my inbox, however, autumn arrived about a month earlier: it’s easy to define the seasons by what fellow food bloggers are raving about and on arrival back from honeymoon my virtual world was a veritable celebration of all things pumpkin. Continue reading

A Collaboration with Why Nut

Why Nut Pistachio Macarons

When I was about five years old, I took my toy dog to a neighbour’s birthday party. Throughout my childhood a cuddly elephant was my companion of choice so I’m not quite sure why the dog received this special honour: perhaps the elephant was holding the fort in my bedroom. Either way, the dog was present for pass the parcel, sleeping lions, birthday cake cutting and jelly and ice cream.

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Individual Pear Tarte Tatin

Pear Tarte Tatin A meal, in my eyes, isn’t quite complete without something sweet at the end. At home, in London, I tend to reserve my major indulgences for the weekend, with natural sweeteners and whole grains, yoghurt and fruit featuring regularly during the working week. On honeymoon, however, we threw caution to the wind, eating dessert on every single day. Sometimes even twice. Continue reading

Anytime Sunshine Bars

Mango coconut barsA whole week has passed since we arrived back from our honeymoon in Bali and I’m slowly coming back to reality. Some might suggest it’s a time for the post-wedding blues but sitting at a desk, daily commute and grizzly grey weather aside (granted, that’s a fairly large aside), reality is pretty damn good when you find yourself married to your best friend and favourite person in the whole wide world.

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks that I’m never going to fit it into one post. There’s the wedding day itself, the food, my thoughts and photos (which we’ll be getting at the beginning of October, I promise to share a few). There’s also two weeks’ worth of adventure on an island thousands of miles away, more photos and a catalogue of delicious meals consumed and new flavour combinations to experiment with. Continue reading

Wedding Cake

Wedding cake

Carnivorous Husband (I have a feeling the novelty of saying that won’t wear off for a long time…) arrived back from Bali early yesterday morning. Bronzed, blissfully happy and still riding the wave of emotion and complete and utter joy that is being married, in love and signed up to spend the rest of our lives together, we’re also exhausted so I’m afraid there’s no recipe from me today. However rest assured that our travels have been beyond inspirational and I’m itching to get back in the kitchen and share some new ideas in this space soon.

In the meantime, while we don’t have the official wedding photos back yet (I promise to share some when we do), I couldn’t resist posting this slightly blurry snap of our cake. Three tiers of deliciously sticky dark chocolate sponge were layered with hazelnut praline ganache then coated in modelling chocolate before being topped with a pair of edible lovebirds, one bespectacled to match my handsome new husband 🙂

Love and cake – in that order, of course – are pretty much all you need.