Strawberry and hazelnut bread

It's a charity bake sale in work tomorrow, so I thought I'd use a couple of punnets of strawberries that were sitting in our fridge to try out my new fascination with fruity mini loaves (see my recent experiments with mango bread and peach bread).  I doubled the quantities of those recipes, so this makes 2 normal loaf cakes or 13 mini loaves.  Hazelnuts seemed like a nice combination with strawberries, but I think this would be lovely with pecans or macadamia nuts too.  The strawberry jam glaze made them look deliciously shiny and tempting. These are really sweet!

Flourless clementine, pistachio and rosewater cake

This is based on a Nigella Lawson recipe for a clementine cake using the whole fruit (skin, pith and all) and no flour, but also takes inspiration from a lovely Nigel Slater recipe from his book The Kitchen Diaries, adding pistachios and rosewater to the flavours.

I made it as a birthday cake for my mum, as I was looking for an interesting wheat-free cake idea for my two gluten-free sisters to enjoy with all of us – I’m not a big fan of wheat-free flour so I wanted a flourless recipe.  Mostly flourless cakes are chocolate ones (my favourite is this black forest gateau recipe) but Mum's not a chocolate fan.  This cake suits all those complicated things - wheat free, flourless, non-chocolate - but delicious and quite grown up!  Served with iced mint tea, happy birthday Mum! 

Peach and pecan bread

This is a peach version of my mango bread, with almond essence, pecan nuts and some chunks of diced peach.  I made it as a large loaf but it would be lovely in little loaf cases.  Delicious!

Lime muffins with kiwi, pomegranate and strawberry jam filling

I'm still using up the last of the sweet salsas from the Mexican dessert the other night - this recipe uses the microwave to make a quick and easy jam out of diced kiwi fruit, strawberries and pomegranate.  It takes a while to cool down so you need to make it at least an hour before the muffins to give the jam time to cool.  And make sure you use a really big bowl in the microwave as the jam bubbles up really high!

Mango bread

After our sweet taco dessert for Mexican night yesterday, we had quite a lot of puréed mango leftover.  I'd recently bought some really cute mini loaf cases that I've been desperate for an excuse to use - and this was the perfect opportunity: mango bread!  I didn't have any eggs (and was too hungover to stagger to the shop to buy some!) so this is an eggless recipe - I used walnut oil instead, but I think any flavourless/ vegetable oil would do.  (I'd also almost run out of self-raising flour, so this has a mix of both that an plain, plus bicarb as well as baking powder - if you've got the right things and no hangover, use all one kind of flour and the right type of powder to go with it!)  They came out beautifully - perfect for a cup of tea at the end of a hungover Sunday afternoon.

Brandy snap tacos and sweet salsas

We had a mexican-themed party last night with the girls - nachos to start, chilli and sweet potato wedges for the main course, followed by an inspired dessert, an idea that Lu dreamt up: taco-shaped brandy snaps and sweet salsas!

• 'Salsa' was made with diced strawberries and red plums, lemon juice and sugar.
• 'Guacamole' was made from diced kiwi fruit, pomegranate seeds, lime juice and sugar.
• 'Cheese dip' was made from pureed mango, peach and a little sugar.
• 'Sour cream' was a mojito-style syllabub of lime juice, brown sugar and rum, whipped with double cream and mixed with fresh mint leaves.
• 'Chilli' was made with crumbled chocolate cake, ground almonds, purple jelly beans, mushroom-shaped sweets and cherry jelly sweets chopped up to look like red and green peppers.

And the 'taco shells' were brandy snaps - the first time I'd ever made (or tasted) them.  They were really good, and dead easy!

Pear and raspberry crumble pots

These are a really quick and simple pud and take just a few mins to prepare, then can be baked in the oven while you eat dinner.  Delicious! 

The ultimate crispy cakes

If you think you can't beat cornflake cakes, try these - add honeycomb, raisins and chopped nuts to a mix of dark and milk chocolate, along with cornflakes, for a (slightly more) grown-up version of a childhood favourite! 

Pear and Apple Tarte Fine

This is my version of a tarte fine aux pommes.  I made this recently after my dad gave me a bag of apples from his garden - fruit from the apple trees he planted when my little sister and I were born.  It's really quick to make and could be adapted for pretty much any fruit you've got lying around - nectarines and blueberries is a nice combination.  I like it served cold the next day, when you can eat it like a sweet version of left-over pizza - great to find in the fridge in the morning and take to work for elevenses!

Pomegranate and white chocolate cupcakes

These little cupcakes are fruity and sweet, with pomegranate berries adding a lovely juicy crunch.  The icing is quite sweet, so you could try them without any icing and just a light sprinkle of icing sugar or a glaze made with low-sugar jam and a few pomegranate berries to decorate.

Doug the Pug was desperate to get his paws on them!

Plum upside-down cake

This was a new take on several upside-down cakes I've made.  They are a lovely way to use left-over fruit that you find beginning to wilt in your fridge or fruit bowl, including rhubarb or blueberries - and a greengage and blackberry one I made recently using this recipe was especially good.  The one pictured here I made using red and yellow plums, the red ones so shiny and bright they looked almost like juicy ripe tomatoes.  I've added yoghurt as it worked so well in the redcurrant and white chocolate muffins I made recently - it keeps the cake beautifully moist, and makes the texture more like a decadent pudding than a mere sponge cake.