(Wim)berry cake

On a recent work trip to North Wales, my colleague Paul told me about spending childhood days picking wild wimberries on the mountains near his home.  He couldn’t believe it when I said I’d never heard of, let alone tasted, a wimberry. He tried to explain that they were like mini blueberries, but was determined to find some and bring them into work.  True to his word, he came in the next week with a small tub and presented me with my first wimberry – delicious, but unfortunately he’d not found a very large crop and the tub he brought in contained only a single, solitary wimberry – not enough to bake with!  For his birthday, I made this cake – unfortunately, I could not find the elusive wimberries to bake with either, so I made do with a combination of blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants.  If I ever find enough wimberries, I will bake them in this recipe – but for the time being, I’m still less than convinced that they really exist (perhaps what Paul gave me was just the tiniest blueberry he could find...)

Salted chocolate hazelnut crispy cakes

These are vegan, gluten free chocolate and hazelnut crispy cakes, given an extra special twist with a pinch of pink Himalayan salt.

Nutty energy bites

Another of my vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, no-bake recipes for energy bars and bites created for the Allroots Yoga Festival. These ones are made with a delicious mixture of almond butter, peanut butter and agave nectar, and chock-full of seeds, nuts, raisins, rolled oats and rice flakes, then rolled in desiccated coconut.

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.

Energy balls!

I spent a lovely weekend helping out at my friends Ellie and Ruadhan's yoga festival, and had a little stall selling vegan, gluten free energy bars and flapjacks. This recipe was the out-and-out winner, selling out in minutes! 

Vegan banana mini muffins

Lovely mouthful-sized muffins!

Deconstructed blackberry and apple crumble

I’m a huge fan of crumble, but have recently discovered a way of making it so quickly, and in small quantities, so I can have an instant crumble for one late at night when I fancy a sneaky sugar kick!  I’ve called it ‘deconstructed’ crumble, which makes it sound very chef-y and pretentious, but really it’s just some delicious oaty, almondy crumbs that can be sprinkled on any fruit you’ve got to hand, which is very quickly stewed (well, warmed through) while the crumble bakes.  Our garden is groaning with blackberries at the moment, so I’ve been eating this quite often with them, but you could use other berries, apples, pears, peaches or whatever combination you fancy.

Blackberry nectarine galette

A very quick pudding to use some of the deliciously juicy, plump blackberries from our garden, this uses ready-made puff pastry so is ridiculously quick to assemble after a long day at 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!

Clotted cream tiramisu

Lu loves tiramisu and always orders it when we go to Italian restaurants, but I realised recently that for some reason I’ve never made it!  For her birthday, I decided to give it a try, but unfortunately couldn’t find any mascarpone at the shops.  Instead, I made it with clotted cream – and Lu says this was the best tiramisu she’s ever tasted, so for now on this will be how I always make it!