Cinnamon Coconut Cake

If you're new here, you'll quickly notice that I love sheet cakes. I love a three tier cake too, but there haven't been many occasions in the last 12+ months for those unfortunately. This type of cake is quicker to make and you can cut it up before serving for easier access for sharing.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can either make 1 sheet cake or a three tier cake. Or cupcakes! The below recipe, I managed to get a full sheet cake and 5 cupcakes.

This cake is sweet and nutty, but the cinammon brings a lovely warmth. This is a cracking cake. I want it for my birthday! Obviously some desiccated coconut would be perfect on top but I completely ran out, so I went with my new favourite, bright bold sprinkles.

White Chocolate Coconut Cake

It's funny where inspiration is found these days. I was reading an article about how Tom Cruise bought a lot of his friends a specific cake for Christmas. It was a white chocolate coconut bundt cake and that just sounded delightful to me. 

Full disclosure, I first tried this cake as a bundt cake and it failed miserably. In fact, I can't recall a time when I've ever successfully extricated a bundt cake from a bundt pan. I've tried the tricks. I think my pans are just really old without modern non-stick technology.

I added a little bit of cinnamon to this cake which I think just elevated the basic sponge and really goes with the chocolate-coconut topping. It's a delicious cake-y version of those coconut Ferrero Rochers and it hits the spot.

This makes one sheet cake. If you want to make a three tier cake, increase the recipe by 1/3 (so 225g butter, 180g sugar, 3 eggs etc etc).

Everything Cookies

Okay, I added a bit of everything for these bad boys. And they’re PERFECT.

Take a cookie. Add peanut butter. Sprinkle over some coconut. M&Ms? Sure, they can join the party. Chocolate chips go without saying.

YES. GET IN MY MOUTH.

Cocoa Coconut Cake

Hello, hot weather! For me coconut is such a summer flavour, and I'm always looking for ways to incorporate it into cooking. This is a perfect, chocolately, fudgy cake with a deep nutty twist. Its dense and the flavours just smack you in the face - my kind of cake!

My mum made this and it was such a hit I had to try it out for myself! It's a very simple recipe, but the cake you get at the end of it is killer.

It’s like a mix between a brownie and a cake, and it also makes delicious cupcakes. For the cupcakes, I baked for 15-20 minutes instead of the full cooking time and decorated as normal.

Ingredients for the cake

• 90g desiccated coconut
• 325ml reduced-fat coconut milk
• 275g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 45g cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 200g soft unsalted butter
• 225g light muscovado (or light brown) sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs

For the buttercream

• 75g coconut milk (take some of the hard part from the tin above)
• 50g unsalted butter
• 300g icing sugar (you might need more)
• 30g cocoa powder
• 1-2 tsp milk, if necessary
• Chocolate sprinkles/dessicated coconut, to finish.

Cauliflower Coconut Curry

That meal prep life

More vegetarian food! And it's absolutely delicious!

My biggest problem with doing a “weekend big shop” is that you can never trust the meat to last more than 3-4 days, so by the time you’ve hit Friday, your options are really limited.

Bright yellow loveliness

A simple way to combat this, something I really should have considered earlier, is to lose the meat. This involves expanding the selection of veggies that I eat. I have a love-hate relationship with cauliflower. I hate when it’s made to be something its not – rice/pizza bases it is NOT. However, it brings an incredible texture to soup.  And I hoped it would be nice in a curry (don’t worry, it is).

This meal is great - low in calories, main ingredients unlikely to go bad in 5 days, delicious and easy to whip up! You could also mix up the veg – spinach, peas, carrots would all work here.

Paneer Coconut Curry

You guys, I’ve cracked it.

I’ve made the best curry I’ve ever tasted.

This is the pinnacle of creation. It was so delicious. It made my whole house smell amazing. It starts with this curry base that takes a decent amount of onion (there will be tears), what feels like too much oil (it’s ok, you need it and you can skim it off near the end), and a delicate hand with spices.

I’m never eating anything else.

You need a little time to make this but it is worth it. The base can be prepared in advance, it makes about 3x what you need and keeps in the fridge for a week, and can be frozen.

How's that for a slice of liquid gold?

Date and Coconut Balls

And now for a little mid-week "healthy-ness."

Sometimes you buy a bunch of dates and have to find something to do with them.

And then sometimes you’re having a lovely buffet lunch on holiday and find an unexpectedly delicious date and coconut ball, and it all becomes clear.

I’m not usually a big fan of dates, but those little "energy balls" were a revelation and I decided to make my own. There’s about 95 calories per ball so about the same as a mini Milky Bar. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they are choices for different days.

I can say that in their favour, they’re easy to make (blitz in the food processor), last 2 weeks in the fridge and are great as a snack on the go when you don't want something overly sweet or chocolatey. Oh, and they ARE gluten and dairy free if that’s your game.

Baked Passion Fruit (and Coconut!) Glazed Donuts

IT'S DONUT TIME AGAIN!

This is an excellent recipe for if you happen to have some passion fruit curd lying around. I realise that isn’t a cupboard stable for everyone (though it is delicious and ridiculously easy to make, so I don’t see why not). If you don’t, the pulp and seeds from a passionfruit will do perfectly well, but the flavour will be slightly more tart.

Personally, I love passion fruit and coconut together. Ever since I brunched on some amazing ricotta pancakes delicately dotted with passion fruit curd and coconut cream, I have loved this combo. It was life-changing.

Have you all bought the donut pan yet? I have used mine more this year than a muffin pan.

Let’s all hop on the baked donut train again! Choo choo!

Makes 12-16 donuts

Slow Cooker Coconut Beef Curry

This is my new absolute favourite.

I love slow cooker meals that take like 8 hours. The main benefit for me is that I can put one on in between night shifts and wake up to the smell of a delicious dinner that’s all cooked and ready to go. It’s the one time in my life I feel like an adult.

Beef is great for that. 6-8 hours on low and you have chunks of beef that are falling apart. They can literally be cut with a spoon. You need that in your life.

This curry is an insanely delicious meal. I felt LUCKY to wake up to this meal. I’m not going to say it made night shift worth it, but I wasn’t mad at it.

The other great thing is that the spice paste makes enough for 2 curries, so you can either halve it or make the full amount and store some in the fridge for a week or two so you can have yet another delicious meal.

Vegan Coconutty Oaty Cookies

I am always up for a baking challenge, and I fancied taking on the challenge of feeding my vegan colleagues at work! I feel bad leaving them out when I bring in my baked goods, so I put my mind to finding some easy vegan recipes. There are a ton of dairy free spreads out there, so that isn’t hard, but eggs are somewhat ubiquitious in baking, and therein lay the difficulty.

Countless google searches and I found an interesting recipe to build on. But I admit, I was sceptical. I didn’t think it was possible to get such chewy and amazingly light cookies without eggs being involved somehow. But these are a damn revelation. Perfect chewiness, easy to make, taste amazing. Win win win.

You know how Phoebe brags that she makes the best oatmeal raisin cookies in the world (but she doesn't make them very often because she doesn't think it's fair to the other cookies!) - well these are those cookies. They look unassuming but they pack a punch!

Makes just over a dozen chunky cookies

Caramelitas

So, I went home recently and was trying out a few new coffee places. And all of them were serving these flapjack looking caramel chocolate creations. They were called labelled “caramelitas” and I’d never heard of them before. I obviously bought one to try, and then immediately decided that I had to make my own. We’re basically talking a sugary crumble bar with chocolate and caramel filling.

Buuuut the amazing thing about this is that you can make a load of different types based on what you like and what’s in the cupboard. Here, I’ve made the basic chocolatey caramel ones (with coconut!) as well as some nutty ones with hazelnuts and Nutella sprinkled in. I’ve also made them recently with coconut added to the caramel and chocolate, and also spiced ones with Lotus biscuit spread and cinnamon powder.

This recipe makes two full trays of biscuit-y, caramel-y, chocolate-y gooey goodness. Feel free to halve it if you don’t feel like gorging on dozens of these things. You crazy person.

Passionfruit and Coconut Cake

Good weather calls for good cake!

And have I got a summertime treat for everyone. This is a kind of tropical version of the lemon curd cake I’ve posted previously. This just feels so summery and would be the perfect end to a fancy picnic. Fresh and zesty and nutty – and super easy to make!

Gather your ingredients, yo!

Passionfruit, coconut and sponge is just the best little trio you could ever imagine. Try it and then try to tell me I’m wrong.

Coconut Tiffin

Soon after, I ate this

I'm currently post-nightshift. I'm very delicate right now after 4.5 hours sleep, and I don't know up from down. All I know is that tiffin is amazing. I'm holding on to that right now.

Tiffin is a real crowd pleaser. I just want to experiment with different tiffin flavours and never make anything else ever again. I don’t think anyone would fault that decision. Try it, and believe.

I didn't make enough to quite fit right to that last corner.,

So, with that in mind – coconut chocolate tiffin!

Traybakes are amazing, they’re quick and delicious and easy to transport. This one is all covered in chocolate and coconut and it really is incredible. I got a bar of white chocolate with coconut through it in Aldi, so I’ve used that because it fitted the theme, but you could just use plain white chocolate chips if that’s all you’ve got. The Aldi stuff is about 80p though, so if you’ve got one nearby, it’s worth a trip in – the Germans know chocolate.

Creamy Jamaican Jerk Chicken

I am incredibly impressionable. We went out for dinner to the new Caribbean restaurant recently and I immediately came home and started researching Caribbean recipes. Now, for my tastes there is a lot of fruit kicking about in their savoury recipes. This is most definitely NOT in my wheelhouse. Like pineapple on a pizza, mango in a curry is not acceptable to me.

But, I like lots of other aspects – the bbq charred aspect, coconut EVERYWHERE, rice with all kinds of stuff in it.. I’m well up for all of that. Also, a lot of this style of food was “on the bone” which is fine and delicious, but I am a creature of habit and I usually default to cooking with chicken breasts. But if you have chicken thighs around, feel free to marinade them instead!

Now, for the rice part, I know traditionally you have kidney beans in it, but I didn’t have any on hand, and I don’t really like them anyway. So I added some extra veggies, and forgot about the beans. feel free to add them if you like them, this is a very laid back style of cooking, just go with what feels right.

"Raw" Coconutty "Snickers" Traybakes

Oh dear me. I don’t really know how I found myself down this rabbit hole of blitzing dates in a food processor on the instruction of a recipe for which “blended dates” is a synonym for “caramel”.

Anyway. I had a brief foray into the world of clean treats when I made sweet potato brownies. And then I forgot all about it. And then I started this “healthier” eating kick, and of course my first step was to bookmark a million recipes.

The whole raw food concept is interesting to me. It’s an odd phenomenon, people who can’t or choose not to eat processed, pre-packed food like chocolate bars, but who try to recreate the taste in a more wholesome way. Of course, this still has sugar and calories and is still very much a “treat,” but doesn’t have lots of additives and un-natural-ness.

I’m not going to lie. I’m sceptical about it. Sometimes I think the people who make these things haven’t had a bar of proper chocolate in so long that they kind of forget what it tastes like. Make no mistake, a snickers bar is an incredible and delicious thing (and don’t even get me started on the hazelnut version!). And this version, while definitely not a snickers, has its own sweet, nutty, chewey, crunchy appeal.  I think these raw treats are let down by comparisons, and we should just let them be their own weird little nutty-fruity thing.

One thing that I’ve noticed with all the raw recipes is that you won’t really get away without a food processor. I couldn’t get through 48 hours without mine, but if you don’t have one, you really should consider it. I even have two – a regular sized one and a little tiny one, for chopping tiny things!

Coconut Baby Shower Cupcakes

New year, new life.. And one of my friends is having a baby!

So, I decided to make a few little cupcakes for a mini baby shower. She doesn’t know what she’s having, therefore I decided to keep them very neutral, and I wanted a nice plain-coloured cupcake which still packed a lot of flavour.

Everyone knows I LOVE a bit of coconut, and coconut and jam are just best buds in my kitchen, so I did half little coconut cupcakes and half larger coconut muffins with a surprise jammy centre! These turned out sweet, super-duper coconutty and utterly gorgeous. I will make these a lot more.

Packaged up for transport!

Sidebar: because I am great at planning my life, the battery to my camera failed at the very end of this recipe, so the last few photos are courtesy of my nexus 5.