Roasted banana ice cream

This is a three ingredient recipe - just coconut milk, honey and bananas, roasted in their skins to bring out their flavour.  It also means it's suitable for vegans as it contains no eggs or milk.  I made it to accompany my roasted banana bread with brown butter frosting and caramelised pistachios.   

Roasted banana bread with brown butter frosting and caramelised pistachios

The smell of roasting bananas is almost as good as great banana bread itself - rich and sweet and caramel - and adds a depth of flavour to my favourite banana bread recipe. I also added a frosting, made with browned butter which also has a similarly caramelised, nutty flavour. I topped it with some caramelised pistachios and took it for dinner with our friends Emma and Geraint, along with some homemade ice cream made with the remaining roasted bananas, coconut milk and honey.  

Sweet sixteen cake – a giant chocolate and vanilla cupcake

My friend Niaz asked me to make a cake for his daughter's sixteenth birthday today. I decided to make a 'sweet sixteen' cake, decorated with a mixture of pastel-coloured sweets - dolly mixtures, mini marshmallows, mini Smarties and edible silver balls.  Her favourite flavours are chocolate and vanilla, but to make it a bit more special I decided to use a giant cupcake mould (chocolate cake on the bottom and vanilla on the top). The bottom part I coated in melted dark chocolate, and topped it with a chocolate cream cheese frosting.  Happy birthday Haleeka!

It was the first time I'd used the mould, so I wasn't sure how much cake batter I'd need - I made an 8 egg sponge, but it was more than I needed so I used the extra batter to make 15 little cupcakes to go with the giant one. The recipe here is for a six egg batter, as I think that's all you'd need for the giant cupcake.

Pomegranate molasses cookies

These cookies were an experiment to try using pomegranate molasses in baking. It's got an amazing but really unusual flavour - an almost sweet and sour tang - so I added some lemon zest, spices (cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) and sweetened it with a little cocoa and white and milk chocolate chips. 

Chai cake with blueberries and chai caramel buttercream

I made this cake for our friend Jon's birthday. We celebrated at KatiWok, the pan-Asian street food diner I designed, where we always drink delicious homemade chai tea. When I was decorating the restaurant, creating a huge collage of Asian pop culture imagery all over the restaurant walls, I got completely addicted to the chai made to the secret recipe of Mem, their fantastic sous-chef (who also makes the most incredible bhajees, samosas and dumplings).  For this cake, I tried to replicate her flavours by grinding my own spice blend - I used cardamons, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice. I'm sure there are hundreds of ways of making chai, but I'm pleased to say this turned out as close to Mem's as I could've hoped for. For the frosting, I made a caramel with chai tea bags and added it to a buttercream, then topped it all with fresh blueberries. Happy birthday Jon!

Persimmon passionfruit cake

I invented this cake to use some persimmons or Sharon fruit that I'd found in the greengrocers - I've never tried them before, but they have a really unusual taste - a mixture of citrus, spice and tropical fruit.  I puréed the flesh in a blender and added it to an almond cake batter spiced with cinnamon. To fill and ice the cake I made a passionfruit whipped cream, and topped it with thin slices of persimmon. It was totally delicious and I will definitely be making this again!

Banana courgette blondies

I was so impressed with the chocolate courgette brownies I'd made, I decided to try making 'blondies' - brownies without chocolate, this time with banana instead. Again, you'd have no idea that these contained any courgette, and because they are free from eggs or butter they are suitable for vegans. You could almost say these are healthy cakes!

Chocolate courgette brownies

These might sound weird but they taste absolutely amazing. You'd never know there was a load of grated vegetable in them, but you will wonder how they are so gorgeously moist! TThey also don't contain any eggs or butter, so are suitable for vegans. I used yellow courgettes fresh from my mum's allotment, which of course made these extra special.  I took them to Plymouth for a weekend away with the girls. I think they are the best brownies I've ever made - deliciously rich, gooey, chocolatey, and a perfect light and fluffy texture. Try them!

Amazing yellow courgettes from Mum's allotment

Rhubarb, orange and cinnamon crumble pie

My mum came to stay at the weekend and arrived with a great basket of wonderful fruit and veg from her allotment. The most amazing globe artichokes, the biggest yellow courgettes I've ever seen, and great long stalks of rhubarb. This evening I turned the rhubarb into a pie with a nutty crumble topping, and flavoured the fruit with the zest and juice of an orange and spiced with cinnamon. Served, of course, with lashings of custard!