Gluten-free granola

My son Mostyn is a big fan of granola but as he is gluten-free, we make our own using gluten-free oats (although they are naturally GF, wheat is often used in the rolling process so you need to make sure you buy oats specifically labelled as gluten-free). You can mix up the recipe as much as you want, varying the choice of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and even the type of oil, sweeteners (I like a mixture of honey, brown sugar and maple syrup, but golden syrup also works really well) and spices (which you could leave out altogether if you so wished).

Apricot and pistachio flapjacks

These are yummy, moist flapjacks that are really quick to make.

Apricot, pistachio and maple energy bars

A vegan, gluten free, no-bake recipe I invented for my stall at the Allroots Festival.  These are really quick and easy to make, and would be great for breakfast or a mid-morning snack to take to work.

Pistachio chocolate truffle-cookies

A lovely couple called Rhian and James commissioned me to make them a chocolate and pistachio wedding cake just like the one I’d made for my friend Sarah.  James also confessed that he is a complete addict when it comes to cookies, and so I made them a great big batch of chocolate and pistachio cookies to go with the cake.  I’d planned to use my trusty recipe for this, but having finally used up the mountains of ingredients in my kitchen for the cake, I mistakenly assumed that all the chocolate that was left was for the cookies – forgetting entirely that I still had to make a large amount of chocolate ganache for the cake. It seemed like an awful lot of chocolate as I stirred it into the cookie dough, and so when I re-checked my cookie recipe, I realised that I had actually used three times the amount of chocolate.  Rather than starting again straight away (which would’ve meant going shopping for more ingredients) I decided to bake the cookie dough I’d made and see if it worked – after all, what harm does extra chocolate do anything?  It was a mistake that paid off – these are without doubt, the best cookies I have ever made.  There is so much chocolate that they are almost held together by it – they become more like chocolate truffles with some cookie dough in – but they are unbelievably good.  The bride and groom emailed me after the wedding to say what a huge hit they had been and that they’d struggled to get James away from them.  Sometimes mistakes are the best form of invention!

Citrus almond cinnamon cake with Chantilly cream, berries and pistachios

This weekend we cooked a huge brunch for a lovely gathering of 15 of our friends and five of their kids, including three very beautiful babies!  I made this whopping great cake which Matilda, pictured here, could barely wait to dive into. The cake itself was flavoured with orange and lemon zest, cinnamon, vanilla and ground almonds, then topped with apricot jam, Chantilly cream, raspberries, blackberries and pistachios.  You can see it was massive and for a smaller number of people you could halve the ingredients and make a one layered cake (and still it would be deep enough to slice it in half to sandwich with jam and cream).

Passionfruit, lime and pistachio layer cake

Our friend Jon’s flatmate Shivaji is moving home to India this week and cooked us a fantastic Indian meal to say goodbye.  I contributed this cake to the feast – made with pistachios and passionfruit pulp in the cake batter, then iced with a mascarpone mixed with passionfruit curd, an amazing find from a recent farmer’s market.  You can buy the curd online or make your own from scratch – Nigella Lawson has a nice recipe on her website.  

Pistachio, chocolate and raspberry layer cake

I was commissioned by a work colleague to make a smaller version of my recent chocolate and pistachio wedding cake, for her daughter's 30th birthday.  The method is just the same, but I thought I'd post it with the scaled down ingredients as this is a much more manageably-sized cake that I'm sure I'll make far more regularly!

Chocolate pistachio caramel cream muffins

We're still ill. And thoroughly fed up of feeling hot and cold, achey and shivery. I decided we needed a chocolate fix. No chocolate in the house, and it's too cold and dark to venture out for some.  But in the pantry, I did have cocoa, and caramel, and pistachios. So I decided, muffins - about the quickest of all baking, no need for an electric whisking, just the bare minimum of a quick stir of wet ingredients into dry, and 15 minutes later, warm, chocolatey, nutty, caramel goodness.  We were also almost out of milk, so I substituted with double cream, for extra cheering up!

Chocolate and pistachio layer cake

This mammoth cake I created for my friend Sarah’s wedding.  It’s nine inches wide and made of three layers of cake, which altogether sat about a foot tall.  Covered with dark chocolate ganache over a layer of chocolate buttercream, inside it is made from alternating, striped layers of chocolate fudge cake and pistachio madeira cake, sandwiched together with pistachio buttercream.  It’s then decorated with ground pistachios and fresh figs and berries.  This post includes the recipe and method for each element. 

Pistachio and raspberry friands

Here’s the recipe for the pistachio and raspberry friands I made to go with three other flavoured types for my friend Sarah’s wedding – you’ll also find the recipes for the blueberry and almond friands, hazelnut and strawberry friands and my favourite, blackberry and almond friands elsewhere on the blog.

Apple, pistachio and persimmon cake

A delicious, moreish, warm and cosy pudding of a cake this - made to use some apples from our friends Emma and Geraint's garden that I brought home after a lovely supper with them yesterday. 

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.  

Spiced honey, fruit and nut muffins

Since getting home from Sark I’ve had the most horrible fluey cold.  I think it is proof that too much fresh air and exercise is bad for you – what I need is CAKE to make me feel better!  Feeling pathetic and also fairly exhausted from all the baking I did for the wedding cakes, I want something really easy and quick, and something to nourish my sickliness.  I’m living on mugs of hot lemon and honey for my sore throat.  The answer?  Honey muffins – the quickest and simplest of all baked goods!

Part of the simplicity of muffin making is using American cup measurements for baking – it is a really quick and simple way of rustling up some delicious muffins in no time at all.  Just pour your ingredients into the cup measures, use a hand whisk to lightly beat together the wet ingredients, then add the dry ones, and give it all a quick stir (muffins shouldn’t be over-mixed – the batter is meant to look lumpy.)  Quarter of an hour in the oven is just enough time to clean up and make a cup of tea, ready to enjoy with your delicious hot muffins!

This recipe is based on a honey oat muffin recipe from the White House – you can’t get much more American than that! I added nuts and dried cranberries (any dried fruit would work just as well).  This makes it feel like breakfast (not that I need any excuse to eat cake first thing in the morning) and since there is no sugar or butter in the recipe, I think I can officially call these healthy, and definitely guaranteed to put a smile on the face of someone feeling under the weather!

Pistachio mocha marble cake

We're off for a girls weekend, six of us staying with our friends Liz and Dilly in Plymouth.  I'm looking forward to long walks on the moors, gin cocktails and a good catch up. This is my contribution to our Friday night feast - a marble cake made with one half espresso and cocoa flavoured, the other made with toasted, ground pistachios. I topped it with a coffee buttercream icing and decorated it with the bigger chunks of ground pistachios too big to sift into the cake batter.  A marble cake is a good cake to make when you can't decide which flavour to go with - make both!

Pistachio, lemon and cranberry biscuits

I had some pastry offcuts left over when I made my lemon, pistachio and passion fruit tart for New Year’s Eve.  It seemed too much of a waste to throw such delicious pastry away, so instead I used a mini star-shaped cookie cutter to make lots of tiny biscuits, which I pressed dried cranberries into and sprinkled with sugar.  They were so delicious, I think they’d be lovely to make again on their own, so here is the recipe.

Lemon, pistachio and passion fruit tart

This year, Lu and I decided to stay in for New Year’s Eve.  I’m sure it’s a sign we’re getting old, but it was absolutely lovely to be at home, just the two of us, after all the hectic socialising over Christmas!  So we cooked a lovely meal for each other: Lu made Thai crab cakes to start, and for a main course we had sea bass with goose fat-roasted potatoes and I made an Asian mango salad to go with it.  This was the dessert – loosely based on a classic Tarte au Citron, I added toasted, ground pistachios to the filling and made a lemon and pistachio sweet pastry.  The whole thing was topped with lemon-infused whipped cream, passion fruit and ground caramelised pistachios.  This was a real show stopper of a dessert – and a very decadent breakfast on New Year’s Day before a walk in the sunshine to blow away the cobwebs! 

Pistachio and dark chocolate cookies

I woke up really early this morning, dreaming of these cookies. The thought made my mouth water so much I ended up getting up and getting straight to baking! These are lovely chewy, gooey cookies choc full of big chunks of Bourneville dark chocolate and toasted, chopped pistachios. What better way to start a Saturday?

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!