Chocolate and Caramel Easter Nest Cupcakes

Warning – these are MOIST little buggers. They will sink in the middle, which makes it perfect for making caramel icing nests on top!

So, I was in London a few weeks ago and my culinary highlight of the trip was Violet Cakes in Hackney. They’d come under my radar before for their famous halva brownies. And then again when they were commissioned to make the royal wedding cake. I started following them on Instagram, and drooling.

So we went, we bought pretty much one of everything and chowed down. There is something bittersweet about eating baked goods that are SO MUCH BETTER than what you can whip up in your kitchen. But then I did get to eat the best vegan chocolate cake, cookie, brownie and cupcake that I’d ever had in my life. So I’m counting it as a reality check and an overall win. Because it was delicious.

The cupcake was a dense dark chocolate cake, covered with sweet salty caramel icing.

It was life changing.

My mum bought me the cookbook and I immediately went home to recreate it. I have tweaked the recipe sliiiightly, so mine came out a bit denser than hers. I will still probably play around with it a little more but it’s very yummy as is.

As it's Easter, I chucked some mini eggs on top and called it a day!

Birthday Cupcakes

Americans seem to love mixing sprinkles into cakes, so I thought I would give it a go. They call it funfetti but it just reminds me of birthday party food!

I love this, they look so fun and set up any table to look like a fun party. Got to love some hundreds and thousands. Note to self – buy some more sprinkles! I love the way they brighten up the simple icing, and I am going to start buying up some more variety.

I made these for my brother’s girlfriend’s birthday. She’s a big fan of Lilo and Stitch and so I made some cute cupcake toppers with Stitch stickers and toothpicks – Stich merchandise is niche so I didn’t expect to be able to find any ready made toppers. Really simple but really effective, I’ll be busting out my crafty side to do this again!

Baked Onion Bhajis

These are an amazing side dish to curry. I don’t like deep frying things usually, so when I stumbled across the possibility that you could bake bhajis, I was on it like a car bonnet. The only slightly difficult ingredient to source was the chickpea flour - but I just blitzed some dried chickpeas in the food processor

These are really simple to make, delicately spiced, and an absolute treat. To be honest, next time I might double the recipe and smother the curry directly on top of this and ditch the rice.

Also, full disclosure, I was too excited to eat these so I didn't get any pictures of them plated. Because they were already on my fork and in my mouth.