Best Carrot Cake Recipe

I do not tell a lie. This really is the BEST carrot cake recipe I've ever come across. I was never a huge carrot cake fan, but it's M's favourite cake and now I'm a total convert. I love the texture and slight spice the cinnamon conveys, and coupled with the zingy cream cheese icing, it's a total winner.

This recipe was lent to me by my chinese friend, Yeewen. Her mum emailed it across especially for our baking afternoon. I've had to convert all the american measurements to english ones, but having tested the recipe, I have to admit that it's extremely good. I don't like adding nuts and sultanas etc to carrot cake, in my opinion carrot cakes should be pure, unadulterated carrot. You will need a 25cm spring form cake tin or a brownie square tin.

Best Sticky Toffee Pudding

The weather's been so dreadful of late that all I've wanted to do is be huddled inside with warm and comforting things.

This sticky toffee pudding is incredible. I would go as far to say that it's the best I've ever eaten both at home and in restaurants.

Aubergine cannellini bean bake

I think I've mentioned before in previous posts that aubergine is somewhat my nemesis. I never seem able to cook it properly - the skin always ends up really tough while the soft middle goes stringy. Luckily those days are finally over as BBC Good Food has the perfect way of cooking it. 

This recipe for baked aubergine in a tomato and cannellini sauce is a perfect weekday dinner and exceptionally healthy - low in calories and high protein from the cannellini beans. 

To make enough to feed 2, you will need

2 aubergines

1 tin of cannellini beans, drained

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tsp dried mixed herbs

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp tomato puree 

1 tsp sugar

extra virgin olive oil

Parmesan 

1. Start by preheating the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

2. Cut the aubergine in half length ways (keeping the stalk intact) and slash the flesh.

3. Place in a snug oven proof dish and drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and bake for 30 minutes or until the flesh is soft.

4. In the meantime, fry off the onion and garlic in a little olive oil over a low heat for approximately 5 minutes.

5. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, mixed herbs and sugar. Season with salt and pepper. Half fill the tomato can with water and add this too. Finally, add the cannellini beans. 

6. Cook over a medium heat for around ten minutes or until the sauce has nicely thickened.

7. Remove the aubergine from the oven dish, pour in the sauce and replace the aubergine. 

8. Grate some parmesan over the top and return to the oven for 5 minutes or until the parmesan is nice and bubbly.

9. Serve with a crisp green salad.

What's your favourite way of cooking aubergine? 

Healthy snacking: spicy chickpea crisps

On Saturday, I randomly decided to soak a load of dried chickpeas. A day later they were well and truly swollen but I was left with the minor dilemma of what to do with them. I didn't want to make a standard hummus (as delicious as that would have been, plus I didn't have any tahini). Instead, I trawled the Internet and stumbled across this recipe. 

In the comments below the recipe it seemed that some people had struggled with getting their chick peas nice and crisp. I decided to follow someone's recommendation of double baking them. The result? Beautifully crisp and tasty. The perfect snack, particularly as chickpeas are chock full of protein and low in fat. I stupidly ate a whole load of them on Sunday in the car on the way to my friend Carmela's for lunch and arrived feeling far too full for the huge spread on offer. I must write a post on that lunch soon; it was incredible. Happily I managed to eat everything on offer despite the chickpea binge en-route! 

Anyway back to the chickpeas. Personally, I prefer to use dried chickpeas that I've soaked as I think they result in a better crunch.

You will need:

200g dried chickpeas (soak in a large bowl of water over night, drain, rinse with clean water and dry completely)

2 tsp extra Virgin olive oil

1 tsp chili powder

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp Maldon sea salt

• Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Cover your chickpeas in the other ingredients and mix thoroughly to ensure they have an even coating. Place on an oven proof tray covered in baking parchment.
• Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Bake for a further 20 minutes until crisp.

What's your favourite crisps substitute or healthy snack? 

PS Yay for posting on a school night - things are looking up!

Doughnut cupcakes

I get into school at a time which I think is ridiculously early, around about 7.30am (Sorry Abby, if you're reading this, I know you get in much earlier). Annoyingly my body clock doesn't reset on a Saturday and this morning I found myself wide awake at 6.30am! 

However, one good thing came out of it which was that I managed to make this recipe that I've been dying to try for ages; cupcake doughnuts. By 9am the kitchen was full of delicious doughnut smells! 

I can't recommend this BBC Good Food recipe enough. It's stupidly easy to make and the end result is exactly what you'd expect - a perfect combination of cupcake and doughnut without the huge amounts of calories from fried doughnuts. At around 220 calories per doughnut, these make the perfect Saturday morning treat.

I used raspberry jam, but lemon curd and Nutella work brilliantly well too. 

Makes 12

140g caster sugar, plus 200g for dusting 

200g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

100ml natural yoghurt

2 large eggs

1tsp vanilla extract

140g butter, melted

12 tsp seedless raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius

1. Combine the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together the yoghurt and eggs.

3. Fold the melted butter and wet ingredients to the dry with a metal spoon.

4. Lightly grease a 12 hole cupcake tray

5. Add 1 dessert spoon of batter to each cupcake hole and then add a tsp of jam. Finally top with the remaining batter.

6. Bake for 18 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

7. Allow to cool in the tray for 5 minutes, remove from the tin and roll in the sugar.

What's your favourite Saturday morning baking recipe? 

food: decadent chocolate cake

I hardly ever make chocolate cake.

I'm much more of fresh, light type of cake girl. Lemon drizzle cake is a particular favourite, as is carrot cake with a lime mascarpone topping.

I knew then, that when I promised M a chocolate cake, it had to be a good one.

After scanning the Internet (and most of my cookbooks) for recipes, I chose to follow this one. Although I never usually pick American recipes (as I can't be bothered with converting the units from cups to grams), the feedback for this cake was so good that I couldn't resist.

I'd bought some chocolate especially for making the topic and as the recipe above didn't use real chocolate (only cocoa powder), I borrowed a Nigella recipe for icing. The icing itself is like a lovely ganache - beautifully soft.

Finally I decided to add a layer of apricot jam between the icing and chocolate cake. My friend Lucy did this on a birthday cake she made me and I liked it so much that I couldn't resist adding it myself.

So yes, the recipe below really is a mismash - but the result? Amazing! Such a decadent chocolate cake without being too rich. I may have eaten several huge slices.

Feeds at least 12

300g plain flour
450g caster sugar
140g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sodium bicarbonate
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant coffee granules
240 ml milk
120ml vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
240 ml boiling water
2 large eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Prepare two 25cm sandwich tins with greased baking paper.
2. Add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, sodium bicarbonate and salt to a large bowl. Mix with a wooden spoon to combine.
3. Add the milk, vegetable oil, egg and vanilla to the flour mixture and mix together with either a wooden spoon or an electric mixer until well combined.
4. Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water and carefully add to the cake batter. Beat on a high speed for around a minute. Don't worry if the batter seems very wet to you - it's meant to be!

those are air bubbles, not lumps!

5. Distribute the batter evenly between the two cake tins.
6. Bake for 31-35 minutes, by which time a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out clean and the cakes will have begun to shrink away from the sides.
7. Remove from the tins and allow to cool on a wire rack.

For the icing:

5 tbsp apricot jam (warmed in a saucepan for a few minutes)
125 ml water
30g light muscovado sugar
175g butter
300g dark chocolate

1. Brush your cakes with the melted apricot jam.

2. Place the water, sugar and butter into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar and butter have melted.

3. Remove from the heat and add your chocolate. Stir until it has all melted.

4. Leave for approximately an hour (stirring occasionally).

5. Spread the chocolate icing generously over the top of one of the cakes and place the other cake on top. Finally cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the icing.

Food: apricot flapjack

I was determined to make some energy rich snacks to take along to the Lake District as I knew I'd be doing lots of really difficult walks.

M ate a delicious apricot flapjack in Cornwall the previous week, so that immediately sprung to mind. Rich in slow release oats, natural sugar and apricots, apricot flapjack really is the perfect walking snack. Coupled with this, flapjacks retain their freshness for quite a while when compared with other baked goods and are relatively easy to package up.

I spent a while scanning through recipes, before choosing this one. I was so pleased with the result. It's possibly the best flapjack I've ever made. I particularly like the apricot running through the middle of the flapjack which keeps it beautifully most. Obviously feel free to use any combination of dried fruits; dates and figs also work very well.

Makes 12 squares

225g dried apricots
175g butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
75g light muscovado sugar
300g rolled porridge oats

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius.
2. Chop the apricots finely.

3. Heat the apricots in a saucepan with 2 tbsp of water for 5 minutes.
4. In a separate large pan, melt the butter, sugar and syrup.
5. Stir in the oats and mix together thoroughly.

6. Spoon half the mixture into a greased baking tin (I use an 8 inch square tin) and press down the mix.

7. Spread your apricot onto the oats and level.

8. Add the remaining oats to the top and press down.

9. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

 What's your favourite high energy snack? Do you prefer your flapjack with fruit or without?

Food: guilt free egg fried rice

I'm back after a lovely week in the lakes. This first post was going to be based on our holiday, but having tried the most amazing healthy recipe last night, the lakes will have to wait, and I must share with you a recipe for guilt free egg fried rice.

As an avid reader of the Londoner blog, I always enjoy Rose's food posts and have successfully managed to make quite a few of her recipes.

Having eaten my fair share of naughty foods away last week (think lots of bacon and egg breakfast baps - obviously essential due to all the walking), a healthy meal was long over due.

Rose's recipe uses cauliflower as a substitute for rice. I've read lots recently on using cauliflower as a potato substitute e.g. in mash but I've never actually used it as an alternative to rice. Having recently bought a Magimix, the guilt free egg fried rice seemed perfect.

The end result? Incredible. Honestly, the first healthy recipe I've ever made where I can't believe it's actually healthy. Seriously moreish and very satisfying and carb free and protein and veg heavy.

Feeds 2 very greedy people - Rose used prawns which I don't like so I used chicken instead.

1 cauliflower
2 chillies, sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 eggs
2 tbsp coconut oil - available at health stores and larger supermarkets. It comes solid, but the heat in your pan will soon melt it.
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 chicken breast, sliced
1 tbsp cornflour
5 spring onions, finely sliced
2 tbsp unsalted raw peanuts
2 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
salt and pepper
to serve: sweet chilli sauce

1. Begin by breaking your cauliflower into florets.

2. To make your rice, feed your cauliflower through the grater attachment on a Magimix. If it's a little wet, wring it out in a clean tea towel.

3. In a bowl, mix together 1 tbsp soy sauce and the cornflour. Add your chicken and stir to coat. My chinese friend, Ernie, taught me this tip. It makes the chicken wonderfully tender and juicy.

4. Fry the chicken until cooked in a little coconut oil
5. In a wok or large pan, add your sesame and coconut oil and fry the garlic or a couple of minutes.
6. Add the chillies for a further 2 minutes.
7. Add your cauliflower 'rice' to the wok and cook for 3 minutes. Then add the soy sauce, chicken and spring onions. Season with salt and pepper
8. Finally make a well in the pan and crack the eggs into it, one at a time. Allow them to cook away for about a minute, before breaking them up and incorporating them fully into the rest of the rice.

9. Dry roast the peanuts in a separate pan for a few minutes.

10. Serve a hefty portion with coriander, peanuts and sweet chilli sauce.

Because I like you, here's a sneak preview of the next post.

What's your favourite healthy meal?

Food: summer salads and perfect poached eggs

Now that summer is well and truly here in England, I can't resist knocking up a quick salad most nights for dinner. Not only are they incredibly nutritious, they're also so easy and tasty.

I wrote a post here about the formula for making an easy, tasty salad every time, but I just wanted to share with you the one I ate last night.

Feeds 2

2 nectarines
salad leaves e.g. water cress, rocket, baby spinach, lambs lettuce
2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
parmesan - use a potato peeler to make shavings
handful of green beans
2 eggs

simple dressing: 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. For my actual salad, I just used some balsamic glaze which you can buy from any supermarket.

1. Add the green beans to a pan of boiling water, boil for 4 minutes. Drain and run immediately under cold water. Cut into inch long lengths.
2. Add the salad leaves to a plate together with the parmesan shavings and green beans.
3. Remove the stone and slice the nectarines. Caramelise for a couple of minutes in a hot frying pan.
4. Poach the eggs according to the instructions below.

Although this salad is very filling by itself, I added some avocado and bacon toasts on the side using a recipe from the amazing Londoner blog.

To make enough toasts for 2:

4 thick slices from a crusty loaf
1 ripe avocado
1/2 lemon
5 cherry tomatoes, chopped
1 clove of garlic, halved
4 rashes of streaky bacon

1. Mash the avocado with the lemon juice and a little salt. Combine with the tomatoes.
2. Grill the bacon on a medium heat until nice and crispy
3. Toast the bread and brush each side with the garlic clove.
3. Top the toast with the avocado, tomato and bacon.

Today, for lunch, I fancied more poached eggs. I added a recipe for perfect poached eggs ages ago, but in case you missed it, here it is again. I promise it works every time!

Method:

Firstly, you need incredibly fresh eggs. If your eggs are older than 4 days, you'll need to add a teaspoon of white wine vinegar to your pan. Don't over do the vinegar - there's nothing worse than a vinegary tasting egg and it makes the egg white rubbery. The vinegar, incidentally, helps keeps the white together. Only poach a maximum of two eggs at once - any more becomes difficult to handle. Use a large frying pan filled with boiling water. Have the eggs preprepared by cracking each into an individual cup. Create a vortex in the water by stirring quickly with a spoon. Now add each egg to the pan on opposite sides. Place a lid on the frying pan and boil for 3 minutes. And voila perfect poached eggs - a lovely runny yolk, and firm white.

I  was still hungry after my eggs so I also had my first Coyo yoghurt from Wholefoods (£1.99). Pretty expensive so it'll just have to be an occasional treat.

How do you get on with poach eggs? What's your favourite salad recipe?

Food: cheat's jerk chicken

With the weather set to be stunning over the next few days, I'm sure they'll be more than a few BBQs on the offing.

Unfortunately, we won't be joining them as our tiny flat in London doesn't even have a stamp sized patch of greenery to call our own! sob sob.

However, I was keen to share this recipe. Rather than just adding normal sausages and burgers to the BBQ, why not try some marinading chicken legs? I shared my recipe for real jerk chicken here, but I thought I'd let you know how I got on with a Sainsbury's* pre-made version if you're short for time/want to cheat!

The bottled marinade was really quick and easy to use. You simply pour the marinade over the 10 chicken legs. It's supposed to be used on 8 but I'm stingy and like to make things go further so I used 10 (which were covered very generously by the way).

Leave to marinade for at least 40 minutes.

Then place on a hot BBQ or in an oven at 180 degrees celsius for 45 minutes. Make sure the meat is cooked through, especially when using a BBQ!

The end result? I was pretty impressed with the Sainsbury's marinade. It was authentic in that is used Scotch Bonnet chillies and as such was pretty spicy. Personally, I'd have preferred it even more spicy. The chicken legs were lovely and moist and full of jerk flavour.

What are your favourite BBQ staples? Do you have a favourite chicken marinade?

Food: easy entertaining

We were having some friends over on Saturday night so I said I'd make a few snacks.

The thought of feeding quite a few people used to stress me out but now I keep things simple.

Martin and I had been to see Despicable Me 2 earlier in the day which was sadly really disappointing. Despicable Me is my favourite film so I was really gutted. I think part of the problem was that I was looking forward to seeing it so much that I'd watched every single available trailer far too many times and, as such, had already seen all the funny bits!

I didn't want to spend ages slaving over the cooker because that's when entertaining becomes boring and annoying. I therefore picked some easy to rustle up dishes:

- honey mustard sausages
- caramel and burnt marshmallow cupcakes
- garlic, mozzarella and sugar bread sticks
- tortilla chips and salsa
- quinoa salad

I started by making the Hummingbird bakery caramel cupcakes with a burnt marshmallow topping.

I use a special Ikea cupcake trays which make smaller, taller cakes. The tray costs £7. The recipe below makes 24 of these petite cupcakes.

80g butter, softened
280g caster sugar
240g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
240ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
150g dulce de leche

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Place the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Whisk together until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
2. Combine in a separate bowl the eggs and milk.
3. Add half of the egg/milk mixture to breadcrumb mixture and combine. Scrape down the bowl and add the rest of the egg/milk. Stir.
4. Finally add the dulce de leche and combine.

5. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden and risen.

To make the topping follow this Ottolenghi meringue recipe.

Just make sure that once your uncooked meringue is made that you then use this directly i.e. don't bake it in the oven. Don't worry about uncooked egg - the way the sugar is heated beforehand means that the egg white is fully cooked.

Then place the meringue into a large piping bag fitted with any type of nozzle you fancy - I used a simple star and piped Mr Whippy shaped cones on top of the cupcakes. I then used a blow torch to create the toasted effect.

I also rustled up this quick and easy salsa recipe and served it with sour cream and tortilla chips.

I made an old favourite of sausages with mustard and honey which couldn't be simpler to do.

I prefer to use chipolata sausages. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line an oven tray with foil and place the sausages on top. I used 24 sausages. Then, in a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of runny honey with 1 tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Brush this sticky mixture over the sausages and cook for 35 minutes in an oven - turning half way.

Your end result is beautifully sweet and knarled sausages.

I made some mozzarella and garlic sugar bread. I saw this recipe on the amazing Kitchen Treaty blog. When I saw this recipe originally, I was slightly concerned about the inclusion of sugar, but Karen certainly knows what she's talking about. It was so yummy!

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp freshly minced garlic
1 pack of ready made pizza dough (it comes in a large rectangle)
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
200g grated mozzarella.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. Place the pizza dough on an oven proof tray.
2. Combine the olive oil and garlic and brush over the top of the pizza dough.

3. Sprinkle the cheese and sugar over and bake for 15 minutes or until light golden and bubbly.

I finally rustled up a simple quinoa recipe based on this recipe.

Most of the prep was just assembling and letting the oven do all the work! If you've got lots of people to feed I definitely recommend popping some sausages in the oven and the garlic bread is amazing - you'll never want to buy it again.

We were hoping to have a few leftovers for lunch the next day but everything went, so at least that means everyone enjoyed it!

Do you have any favourite recipes for feeding lots of people? Do you spend all day in the kitchen beforehand or do you prefer to take shortcuts where possible?