Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Loaf

Do what you love and love what you do.

Ten years ago, I started this blog. I pressed publish on my first post sitting at the same table I’m at now, so some things remain, but also . . . change. So much. What a difference ten years make.

Ten years ago I wasn’t yet married, hadn’t published a cookbook, didn’t own the house we’re in now, hadn’t yet met or really even conceived of the three children who currently consume so much of my every waking breath.

I started this blog because I love food. I love to cook and bake, a passion which progressed into recipe development, and I love the connection and community that sharing something to eat can bring. Food is my love language and I’m immersed in it – for both work and pleasure – every single day. But language is also my love.

Somewhere in the chaos of nearly seven years of babies – trying to conceive, miscarriage, pregnancy, breastfeeding – I forgot how much I love to write. Sitting down, sifting through memories, putting pen to paper or text on a screen allows my brain to settle. My husband rarely prepares for things and can ad lib with ease, but I find myself generally so much more articulate on paper than in person, when I’ve had the space to collect and process my thoughts.

For years this blog was a journal of sorts – for myself first and always, but also for friends and connections I made through the blogging world and in turn thousands of people I’d never met. With babies it began to slide and – a weird coincidence – the last proper recipe post I wrote was when Joy was almost exactly the age Cleo is now. Perhaps eight months is how long it takes my brain to surface from the fog of new motherhood? In fact I fear it may never fully, but I’m back in a place where I want to write again, and I hope some of it can be here.

Today we’re talking pumpkin bread. Or cake. It’s baked in a loaf tin but let’s be clear, these chocolate studded slices are cake. I’d hoped to be baking with Joy at her nursery last week (parent volunteers are invited in to read and bake with the children) but Cleo’s only trusted babysitter (my mum) fell through (an urgent tooth appointment) and I was left with the several pumpkins I had stockpiled with a batch of 60 veg-packed scones in mind.

Some scones were made, but there are only so many one family can eat. With lots of roasted flesh to spare, I decided to make this sweet spiced loaf. Banana bread – cake – is my go to loaf bake, but I’m so pleased the stars aligned to bring me excess pumpkin because this recipe is so good. Pumpkin, brown sugar, warming winter spices and great chunks of dark chocolate all bound in a moist but delicate crumb. Twenty four hours after emerging from the oven, the entire cake was gone.

Worth waiting the year and a half since my last proper recipe post? You decide. It is pretty damn delicious.

23May2019

Chocolate Praline Cheesecake

Last week I spent almost an hour reading back over old blog posts. I always intended this space to be a diary of sorts as well as a recipe archive and found myself sucked into the narrative of Nino’s early months, comparing my notes and mindset with where I sit now. Any mother of two small children will know that an hour alone is seriously precious – there are so many things I could, or should, have done with that time – but instead I sat and reminisced over silly stories and anecdotes, things my son might have eaten or done, reliving those early months.

In just a few days, Joy will turn nine months. As long on the outside as in. I’d love to have documented each movement and mouthful for this blog the way I did with Nino, but truth be told it’s three long months since I’ve posted a recipe (sorry!). There have been photos on Instagram, thousands more on my phone and a baby book of milestones to make sure my ancient self can remember the most important details, but those random little insights into daily life that come with regular blog posts are sorely missing.

If by any chance, Joy, you are looking back on this, if WordPress still exists by the time you’re old enough to be interested in reading my random ramblings – a mummy yourself perhaps? – know one thing. This absence doesn’t mean I love you any less. You are adored. It’s simply that we’re living out our lives together, caught in the daily madness of sleepless nights, early mornings, multiple meals, clothes, demands for stories and cuddles and explanations with less time for reflection than I might have had as a mummy of one.

If you do want a quick catch up on what you’re like at almost nine months, your name still pretty much sums it up, sweet girl. Smiling, happy, so kind natured and utterly unphased by anything, including the bouncing bundle of energy that is your big brother as he careers around naked singing ‘Everybody wants to be a cat’. After thinking we were due some respite after Nino, your sleep habits are as appalling as his were, but I couldn’t be cross with the impish grin that greets me each (insanely early) morning and your milky snuggles are simply the best. When it comes to food, you’re also following in your brother’s footsteps with a great appetite, but a little more keen to do it all yourself. No idea where you get that one from . . . ahem. You scooch along the floor at breakneck speed, still more of a drag than a crawl, and are starting to pull up on anything and anyone. At times I see such fierce intelligence and communication behind those gorgeous hazel eyes (a subject of much debate, they seem to change colour every day), others you snuffle in and try to chew on any object in sight (all family members included) like a feral puppy. Charming, feisty, ferociously independent and utterly uncomplicated (so far) you are simply gorgeous inside and out.

Speaking of gorgeous things, a little while back Guylian approached me to develop a recipe for their Finishing Touches ebook. Their chocolate praline shells were a staple of my childhood and although I hadn’t eaten one in years, the first bite too me straight back. Click the link below for my Chocolate Praline Cheesecake recipe, amongst some other delicious looking chocolaty creations.

4Feb2019

Wholemeal Apple & Date Cake

I started this blog in a very different place. It was before I had a husband, babies, a book, multiple things competing for my attention let alone those competing for the attention of the people who read my posts. Instagram had only just been invented and the majority of my internet consumption was through the laptop on which I’m writing this rather than a mobile device. Eight years ago I read my favourite blogs religiously, and whether it’s increasing competition for my time and attention or simply me obediently following the market trend, I find myself scrolling those tiny tiles on Instagram instead, reading recipes posted in comments or stories and getting insights into my favourite foodies through fleeting images rather than words. It’s all about instant gratification and although the majority of Insta-recipes are unlikely to be carefully measured, triple tested, even spell-checked (a tedious pet peeve, but seriously, some big trusted names I’m looking at you) they are immediate and appealing and exactly what we – me included – all seem to want in 2019. Continue reading →

31Jul2018

Molasses Banana Bread (Low Sugar)

Three weeks to go! Or one. Or five. There’s no way of knowing exactly when baby girl is going to arrive but suffice to say we’ve entered the drop zone. This pregnancy has been different from our first in lots of ways; lighter and less worrying without the knowledge of a serious heart condition and surgery, but heavier and hotter and harder physically. There’s the old wives tale that girls make you feel more sick and rob you of your beauty, but while there may be mileage in that, I’m fairly sure it’s largely attributable to running round after a toddler, combined with a different time of year. Nino was born on a cold day at the beginning of February whereas this little lady and I have bunked together through a scorching holiday in Italy and the hottest weather we’ve seen in England for decades. Continue reading →

23Jul2018

Everyday Chocolate Cake

Ever since Nino celebrated his second birthday, we’ve been talking almost daily about what kind of cake family members will be getting for their upcoming birthdays. For Grandpa there was polenta cake, rolled out annually on request (with ever so slight variations to satisfy my urge to experiment). Daddy wants a whiskey one next January. Nino was shocked to discover that his Nonna isn’t that keen on cake, nor is a close toddler friend, but we’ve now been to enough birthdays with caterpillars and rainbows and tray bakes to establish a playing field to work from and, after much debate, we’ve hit on a lemon sponge with fresh strawberry buttercream to make for me at the end of the month.

My go-to is almost always chocolate so it’s refreshing to be pointed in a different direction by my mini kitchen sidekick and I’m excited to make and taste his fruity creation. But before then, chocolate cravings still call – thank goodness for an uncle with a birthday before mine and a last minute lunch invite creating the need to whip up an easy one bowl chocolate cake for a sunny Sunday afternoon. Continue reading →

10Apr2017

Easter Chocolate Cake

Making memories is a wonderful thing. Ever since we’ve had Nino, each time a celebration rolls round I get a little twinkle of excitement at the thought of how I can recreate the fond traditions of Luke and my childhoods. Summer holidays with sandy toes and sticky ice creams, unwrapping presents at Christmas, Mothers Day lunches and chocolaty Easters. For as long as I can remember, my mum would organize an Easter egg hunt in and around the house and garden, working so well on their hiding places that tiny, shiny eggs would appear in the most unexpected places months after the actual event. One year we wondered why she’d disappeared during a dinner party at our flat, only to discover on getting into bed those same tiny, shiny surprises hidden under our pillows, mattress and tucked into our pajamas.

Continue reading →

31Mar2017

Courgette & Raisin Loaf Cake

This blog has never been a hugely controversial space. I don’t tend to talk about politics, haven’t voiced my opinions on Europe or the horrors of what’s happening with the American presidency. Since having Nino there’s been plenty of parent chat; on birth, sleeping, eating, breastfeeding, but although I have my opinions on all of the above, I’m not going to go out of my way to pass judgement on others. Parenting is an incredible, but also incredibly tough, gig, and the last thing any mother needs is someone criticising the myriad choices she has to make on a daily basis. So when, last week, a blog reader compared giving a mouthful of cookie to my one year old with offering him alcohol and cigarettes, I was more than a little bit miffed. Continue reading →

9Feb2017

Happy Birthday Nino: White Chocolate & Lemon Birthday Cake

This time last year we were still in hospital. Forty eight hours after he was born, Nino had an emergency balloon septostomy in the paediatric intensive care unit of the Royal Brompton Hospital, a precursor to the open heart surgery he would undergo nine weeks later. I can remember sitting waiting for him to wake from the anaesthetic as if it was yesterday: the flutter and fall of his tiny chest, the sleepy beeps of a dozen life support machines, the artificial light illuminating our twenty four hour world and the sweet nurse suggesting, gently, for the eleventh time that I try to get some sleep myself. Continue reading →

9Jan2017

Peanut Butter & Jam Mini Cake

Last year we celebrated Luke’s birthday with a bottomless brunch, the tables filled with food, nearly 30 friends and endless bellinis. Being heavily pregnant, I replaced my alcohol calories with a lot of toast, two platefuls of miniature desserts and likely at least one more croissant than is socially acceptable, soaking up the atmosphere and pondering what we’d be doing for the next birthday as a newfound family of three. Fast forward one year and Luke spent a much more low key couple of hours in the local pub while I stayed at home sticky with Calpol as I snuggled a feverish baby to sleep. When he arrived home at the rock and roll hour of six thirty, Luke promptly fell fast asleep on Nino’s activity mat whilst tidying up his toys (true story), but not before he’d hoovered up a large slice of this peanut butter and jam mini cake. Life as we know it has changed unrecognisably, but wherever there’s a birthday, there will always be cake. Continue reading →

5Dec2016

Emiko Davies’ Pear & Chocolate Cake

It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster in the little loaf household of late. About ten days ago Nino started saying ‘mama’ in a very deliberate way, calling me back if I disappeared round a corner or snuggling in and saying it rather than the indiscriminate sound making we’ve been hearing a little longer. My heart is fit to burst and it’s literally the sweetest word I’ve ever heard, but at the same time this cognitive leap seems to have brought with it possibly the hardest behaviour we’ve seen to date. Our usually sunny little man has been grumbling and fussing, clinging round my ankles, waking multiple times each night and resisting sleep with a renewed and infuriating fervour for someone clearly so in need of it. Until you become a mum it’s impossible to understand how you could love one little person so deeply and completely, yet at times want to pop them in a padded room, pour yourself a stiff drink and sleep, uninterrupted, for a week.

Today our little sleep resister turns ten months old. I know this fussy phase will pass (until the next one, that is . . .) but am also wary of wishing a single day away. With less than two months of maternity leave left I’m trying to live in the moment and soak up each precious morsel of my baby, so in the spirit of celebration (and because my sleep deprived brain might forget if I don’t write it down), here’s what we’ve been particularly loving about you this month, sweet boy. Continue reading →