Middle East Feast!

Guess who just got back from Beirut? This moi!

Lebanon is gorgeous, and I literally didn't have a bad meal there. This is a feast I made a few months back, before I'd gone. So because all I want to eat now is Lebanese food, I thought I'd post this while I'm whipping up some slightly more authentic recipes of deliciousness for you all.

Sometimes I just get in the mood to adapt/bastardise some cuisines into a feast of a dinner. This dinner requires a little preparation but is actually quite quick and easy to put together. We have an amazing Lebanese restaurant nearby and every time we go, I have a crisis about what to order. Because I want it all. So, when I fancied that kind of dinner, I MADE IT ALL.

I don’t think any of this is particularly authentic, because I’ve tweaked it to my tastes, adding sesame to the falafel, and turmeric to the tahini sauce etc, but it's really quite delicious. 

Sauce!

You could add in some more chicken, slice up extra pita bread, throw in some hummus and make this a finger food buffet feast for a party! But it makes a really delicious indulgent feasting dinner for two as well.

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.

Apple Toscakaka

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope everyone is having a lovely day with their families. I had an early mother's day two weekends ago with mine where we hit up fabulous London.

Posting a recipe today that reminds me of my nanny, who makes a mean apple pie. I decided to take those flavours and play with them a little (because apart from nanny's apple pie - I don't really eat pie!).

Toscakaka is something I've made before, a classic Swedish almond caramel cake. I had some cooking apples hanging around and some slivered almonds, so I decided to experiment!

One thing I love about cooking is the endless substitutions and possibilities to change up, tweak, and play around with favourite recipes. I love that you can substitute something like butter for stewed apples (which is a delicious and dairy free alternative!).

This is the appropriate amount of custard

So here, I substituted the melted butter for stewed apple, which gives it this beautiful hint of fruity tart sweetness to cut through the rich caramel topping. And it works! It's gorgeous. I served it with custard and I'll dream about that combo for weeks.

Blueberry Crumble Muffins

What do you do when you find 500g of blueberries in your fridge? MAKE MUFFINS (and meal prep some fruit salad).

I always think muffins can be a bit cloying, so I try to lighten mine with some buttermilk, and I think topping them with a little spiced brown sugar crumble adds textural interest.

These are crazy easy to make (and eat!) and I am willing Spring weather to come out and stay out by trying out some fruity bakes.

Chocolate Hazelnut (Ferrero Rocher!) Birthday Cake

Ooooh this is SUCH A GOOD ONE.

Roll up, roll up for the best chocolate cake you'll ever eat. I have a particular love for chocolate and hazelnut, praline, Nutella, whatever you want to call it, I'll eat it.

It was a friend's birthday recently, and we have very similar taste in cakes (except I LOVE mint chocolate and he HATES it). I knew that this kind of cake would be right up both our alleys and I knew I wanted to whip up something which combined the nutty deliciousness of hazelnut with the sweet smoothness of chocolate. 

Good news - it's easy. Mix dry ingredients. Repeat with wet ingredients. Put them together and bake. So simple for so much deliciousness!