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.  

Raspberry chocolate brownies

Erin’s chocolate brownie recipe I made recently was so good it’s all I think I ever want to bake again!  We had a girls night at our house this weekend so it was a great excuse to make them a second time – this time instead of white chocolate chips, I added a layer of frozen raspberries in the middle, and a chocolate fudge icing. Totally divine!

Erin’s salted dark choc brownies with white choc chips

This is a very special recipe.  Our friend Roz emigrated to Australia last year (you might remember I made her some pretty delicious peach melba cupcakes before she went) and when she arrived to start a new life and lots of adventures on the other side of the world, she became fantastic friends with a young woman called Erin. Just before Roz came home to see her family and friends this Christmas, Erin tragically passed away.  Roz kindly shared Erin's famous brownie recipe with me, and it was a privilege to make them yesterday, the day after Erin's birthday.  These are incredible brownies - wildy decadent, fabulously chocolatey, can't-fail-to-make-you-grin, heart-warmingly good! As I baked, and as we ate them, we were thinking of Roz and all Erin's friends and family. I hope that you enjoy them as much.  

Cranberry and clementine loaf cake

This is the second of the cakes I've made today for a charity fundraising cake sale tomorrow, along with an elderflower, lemon and poppyseed loaf cake and a sloe gin, hazelnut and fig layer cake. I'm really pleased with how this looks, drizzled with a glossy red cranberry glaze that reminds me of toffee-apples, and decorated with white chocolate stars. It'd be a lovely alternative to Christmas cake I think.

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. 

Chilli hot chocolate muffins with whipped chocolate coconut cream frosting

I'm still feeling a little under the weather and decided to try spicing up some chocolate chip muffins with a kick of chilli powder, ginger and cinnamon. We'd run out of milk so instead I experimented by using the liquid from a chilled tin of coconut milk - then I whipped the solidified cream with melted chocolate to make an amazing chocolate fudge frosting!

Chocoholic’s fantasy cake

My dad is a huge chocolate lover and so for a meal for father’s day, my sister Lizzie suggested I make a death-by-chocolate style cake.  As she’s coeliac I decided to make a a version of the flourless chocolate cake I’ve made previously, Torta Gianduia, but instead of hazelnuts, this time I used ground almonds.   

I made three layers of cake – each one made with a different bar of chocolate: white, milk and dark chocolate.  A sweetened whipped cream and a chocolate whipped cream sandwiched the layers together, and then the whole cake was iced with a chocolate buttercream.  To finish, I piped lines of shiny dark chocolate ganache on top, then sprinkled shavings of each type of chocolate over it.  Happy father’s day, Dad!

Beetroot redcurrant and white chocolate muffins with elderflower mascarpone icing

Tomorrow our friends Cath and Gregg are getting married. I'm helping decorate and it's a red a white colour theme (Gregg is a big Liverpool football fan). Tonight, Cath is having a few of her close girl friends round to her mum's house to celebrate her last night of freedom! I've made these red and white muffins - coloured with beetroot powder (and a little red food dye to make them more red than pink) and full of white chocolate chunks and redcurrants. The icing is flavoured with elderflower cordial.

Redcurrant, white chocolate and hazelnut beetroot friands

I've made friands before but always as mini-muffins, but this time I used my heart-shaped muffin tin.  Instead of ground almonds, I toasted and ground hazelnuts and added a little beetroot powder for colouring (I could've used another spoonful or so to get the cakes a really rich pinky red).  The tops of the cakes are sprinkled with redcurrants and white chocolate, but these hazelnut friands could be made with lots of different fruit combinations.

White chocolate florentines

These are really easy biscuits to make and take no time at all - but just be careful to watch them when baking so they don't burn.  I've coated mine in white chocolate but they are lovely with dark or milk chocolate too.

Marshmallow mega-chocolate mini muffins

Another all day team meeting tomorrow - so I thought I'd make a batch of mini muffins to help us survive it! These are about the most chocolatey things I can imagine - a very chocolatey mixture plus chopped dark, milk and white chocolate. And the best bit... multi-coloured mini marshmallows! These are really quick to make and guaranteed to put smiles on faces.

White chocolate coffee cookies

These cookies are made with instant coffee powder, straight into the dough without diluting with hot water.  It melts a little in the baking, and the smaller the granules the better - although you still get a little pop of coffee hit when they're baked!  

Summer berry white chocolate muffins

For Christmas I was given the most amazing present - a shiny red Artisan KitchenAid! Now pride of place in my kitchen, this was my first attempt using it - a batch of delicious muffins to start the evening before heading to a New Year's Eve party.

White chocolate cranberry fudge

I love white chocolate and cranberries together (they make fantastic cookies) - and it makes very good-looking fudge for Christmas!

White chocolate pomegranate flapjacks

I recently bought a pack of dried pomegranate seeds in an Asian supermarket.  They were quite sharp and crunchy, so rather than using them in cupcakes or cookies, I decided to try using them in flapjacks as an alternative to raisins or nuts.  I soaked them for a while first in some pomegranate juice and sugar to bring out the full flavour and sweeten them as they'd become quite bitter (I'm sure they're really designed to be used in Moroccan tagines and savoury dishes).  I also decided to add some sugar to the butter and syrup mix to compensate for the sharpness of the pomegranate.  They came out really well - the seeds were still quite crunchy, but the whole flapjack had a lovely fruity flavour and a gooey texture from the melted white chocolate.

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!

Honeycomb and white chocolate cheesecake

This is incredibly good but unbelievably rich - best to make it in small ramekins rather than one big cheesecake

Cranberry and white chocolate cookies

These are delicious dunked, and probably worth making two batches at once as they disappear so quickly

Redcurrant and white chocolate muffins

I made these recently for my friend Kirsty's 30th birthday - 15 muffins with two pink and white candles in each (so no room for the extra redcurrants on the top).  The recipe actually makes 18 (so we had the excuse to test 3 before the birthday party).  I've made these with icing using the juice of the redcurrants to colour it pink, but I think they are nicest just with the glaze of redcurrant jelly and dusted with icing sugar, making them glisten temptingly!