Author: Emma Hawkins
Vegan Chocolate Cake

Vegan Chocolate Cake

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It’s 2019. Everything’s squeaky fresh and everything’s vegan! (For this month at least). I have 9 delish vegan recipes coming your way and then depending on how I like the whole vegan thing I might carry on with it or go back to being a chill veggie. That said, it’s only been 1.5 days and I’ve been hungry and staring at every non vegan thing in my kitchen for most of that time. But it’s gonna be great. I’ve got hummus, I’ve got aubergines, and I’ve got some sweet wonders like this chocolate cake to keep me going!

I actually first came across this way of making a cake a couple of years ago before I even considered going vegan, and it was so good that I didn’t realise it had no milk, eggs etc in it. It also doesn’t require lots of random hard-to-find ingredients like lots of vegan foods do, all you need is just a couple of avocados and you’re good to go! I also cannot stress enough that this is a hella good cake in it’s own right – this has actually become my go-to chocolate cake because it tastes so insanely good. So if the first thing you think of when someone says vegan is a bowl full of bland vegetables try whipping up one of these!

Recipe

Serves 10-12

Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

For the cake

  • Dairy free spread for greasing
  • 2 Small avocados (about 150g)
  • 300g Caster sugar
  • 350g Plain flour
  • 60g Cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
  • 2 tsp Baking powder
  • 400ml Soya milk
  • 150ml Vegetable oil
  • 2 tsp Vanilla extract

For the icing

  • 70g Ripe avocado
  • 100g Dairy free spread
  • 200g Dark chocolate (dairy free)
  • 125ml Soya milk
  • 25g Cocoa powder
  • 200g Icing sugar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 170˚C. Line two 20cm sandwich tins with dairy free spread and baking paper.
  2. Put the avocado flesh into a bowl and puree it with a hand blender. Then put the avocado through a sieve into another big bowl.
  3. Add the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, bicarb, baking powder, milk, oil, vanilla and a pinch of salt to the avocado and whisk together until smooth and velvety.
  4. Pour the mixture into the two tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and springy. (A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean). Leave to cool for a few minutes and then turn the cakes out onto a wire rack.
  5. Now make the icing. Put the avocado and sunflower spread into a large bowl and beat until smooth. Pass the mixture through a sieve and then set aside for now.
  6. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and then leave to cool for a couple of minutes.
  7. Put the dairy-free milk into a pan and bring to a simmer. Put the cocoa powder into a bowl and pour over the milk, whisking until a smooth mixture forms.
  8. Add the avocado, icing sugar, melted chocolate and vanilla and beat again until the mixture is thick, smooth and shiny.
  9. Put one of the cooled cakes onto a plate. Spread over half the icing, then top with the other sponge and the rest of the icing. Serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Cherry and Marzipan Flower Bread

Cherry and Marzipan Flower Bread

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It’s the last post of the year and so I decided to go for this fun-to-make flower bread thing to kick off 2019! Bread’s one of those massively underrated bakes that very few people make themselves, even though its pretty easy and fun to do. By making your own you can also explore breads with really interesting flavours and fillings so you can branch out from the classic plain white loaf and into the colourful world of flavoured bread. Yes it does take some time to make, but it’s more just waiting for it to rise than actually working on it constantly. So if you’re yet to figure out your new years resolutions maybe you could set out to learn how to make bread? I promise you won’t regret it!

Speaking of new years resolutions…

I’ve always been someone who’s loved fresh starts, not necessarily because I screw up so badly I need them all the time, but just because for some reason they make it easier to start something with ommph. For example I can never start a diet mid-week or start going to bed earlier on a random day. So when new year comes around it’s the perfect opportunity for me to look at everything I’m doing wrong in my life and try to sort it out a bit. Of course it never works and I hit December realising how over-optimistic I was last year about what I could achieve, but it never stops me from making them.

Recently I’ve been really getting into Ted talks and on one of them a guy listed some top tips for new years resolutions in order to optimise life enjoyment and productivity. Sounds even more optimistic than the usual gumph we put on our lists but I thought this year I’d try it and see at the end of the year if it did make things more interesting. For example he recommended that we don’t start our new years with ‘I will not do this’ or the aim to do something we’re not actually interested in doing. Yeah running everyday would be great, but if you hate running it’s not the best start to 2019.  Instead we should aim to go places we want to go, learn skills we want to learn, and spend more time with the people we want to spend time with. So if I can pass on any advice for the new year it would be to a) make one of these (it really does taste super good!) and b) start the new year with the aim of doing some fun things that you want to do!

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 2 hours, plus proving and baking time

Ingredients

  • 150g Frozen cherries (or mixed fruit)
  • 3 tbsp Cherry jam (or mixed fruit)
  • 3 tbsp Chambord (or other fruity liqueur like crème de cassis or kirsch)
  • 200g Marzipan
  • 1 Egg, beaten
  • 2 tbsp Demerara sugar

For the dough

  • 500g Strong white bread flour
  • 10g Salt
  • 30g Caster sugar
  • 14g Fast action dried yeast
  • 40g Butter
  • 2 Large eggs
  • 50ml Milk
  • Olive oil for greasing

Method

  1. Begin by making the dough. Put the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a bowl and mix everything together. Make sure you don’t put the salt directly on top of the yeast or you could end up deactivating the yeast
  2. Add the butter, eggs, milk and 100ml water to the mixture. Stir until combined, adding a little more water if needed to bring the dough together.
  3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes).
  4. Form the dough into a ball and then put it into a large clean bowl, greased slightly with clingfilm. Cover with clingfilm and then set aside to prove for around an hour, until doubled in size.
  5. Now prepare the filling. Put the cherries into a pan with the chambord (or tipple of choice) and the cherry jam and then bring to a gentle simmer. Leave for 5 minutes, then puree with a hand blender and take off the heat. Whilst the puree is cooling cut the marzipan into 36 thin slices.
  6. Butter a 24cm pie dish with slopping sides, or a cake tin if you don’t have one.
  7. Turn the dough out onto a worktop and knead for 10-15 seconds to knock the air out. Then split the dough into 4.
  8. Place one of your dough pieces on a lightly floured surface and then cover the other pieces you’re not using with cling film. Roll the dough out to a disc about 4mm thick. Then cut out 7cm rounds from the dough. Keep the off cuts in case you need to re-roll and then repeat with the other portions of dough. You should have around 30-36 circles.
  9. Place one piece of marzipan and a little spoonful of the cherry mixture in the centre of each dough circle.
  10. Fold each circle in half, and then bring the two points of the semi-circle together to make a petal shape.
  11. Arrange the dough pieces around the edge of the tin in a circle, and then make more circles with the dough petals working into the centre. Cover loosely with clingfilm and leave to rise for 1 hour.
  12. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Brush the top of the bread with a little beaten egg and scatter with the demerara sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown and baked all the way through. Serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
A Long Weekend in Bruges

A Long Weekend in Bruges

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About a week ago my Mum and I went on a trip to Bruges – which is arguably the most adorable city in Belgium – to soak up some culture before Christmas. We went by Eurostar which made things super quick and a lot easier than all the paph that goes along with going by plane (easier than getting to Durham to!) so for a weekend it was the perfect getaway. The first noticeable thing when you arrive is that Bruges is basically a toy town as every road is cobbled and every house looks like it’s made out of gingerbread. Whilst this makes it a very pretty city, it does also make it slightly weird underfoot, so just don’t wear heels and make sure your suitcases’ wheels can withstand a bit of battering!

Being a fairly touristy town there is a whole range of hotels, hostels and apartments out there for the picking. We stayed at the Hotel Aragon which was a really really lovely place! Would 100% recommend as it was super comfy, really close to the centre and had a full buffet breakfast thrown in to the mix. As with many European hubs there were so many things to do in Bruges – museums, boat rides and chocolate shops to name a few, but as this is a food blog I’ll focus mainly on the best places to and not to eat over there!

Places to Eat

Waffles Waffles Waffles

One of the great things about touring round Europe is the cuisines. There’s nothing quite like eating food in it’s homeland, and so in Belgium I was keen to seek out the three things I associate most with Belgium: chocolate, beer and waffles! And it wasn’t very hard to find any of those three, I mean everywhere sold waffles – from a simple plain ones with sugar, to waffles on sticks and full out waffle restaurants. However the price varied so much so if you want to get the best out of your money listen up.

In the centre of town things tended to be super pricey, ranging up to about €4.50 for a simple plain waffle! Whereas if you walk towards the edge of the city (which’ll only take about 10-15 minutes as it’s a very small city) you can pick up a delicious waffle with banana and Nutella (or any other toppings you want) for a much more reasonable €2.50. I tried ones of all prices, in all places and generally the quality was pretty consistent (I mean they all tasted incredible!) so if you’re on a budget have a look outside the city centre for the best buys!

The Olive Street Food

The one down side with Belgian cuisine is that it’s very carbohydrate heavy. After a couple of days of chocolate, chips, waffles and more chips I found myself craving something light with salad! Another thing you’ll find in Bruges is that the streets are very windy and so navigating your way around the town is way more complicated than you’d think. I generally think of myself as having a fairly good sense of direction and I got lost several times. Therefore when it comes to finding places to eat we generally found trying to go somewhere you saw earlier completely useless and in the end just wandered around the streets until we found somewhere interesting.

One such places was this amazing Greek takeaway shop called The Olive Street Food. They did a really good range of veggie and meat based wraps and salads to take away, all at a relatively decent price considering how close the place was to the city centre. So if you’re looking for a takeaway I’d strongly recommend this place! I went for a halloumi and aubergine salad wrap that came in a pita bread thing with chips and oh boy was it good.

Ellis Gourmet Burger

On the note of vegetarian food, Bruges isn’t the vegan or even veggie capital of the world so if you’re looking for that kind of food you’re gonna have to search a bit. One place we found that had really good veggie options was Ellis Gourmet Burger in the smaller of the two market squares. They had a whole section of the menu just for veggie burgers including a delicious carrot burger and a vegan beetroot burger! So if you want somewhere for people of all dietary requirements give this one a go.

Olivier’s

Being famous for it’s chocolate it was no surprise that on this trip I had some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted. None of the wishy washy cocoa powder in water business, this was proper chocolate chips and milk. The best place I found for this was a cute chocolate shop called Olivier’s down one of the side streets.

Here they had a wide range of chocolates and treats on show as well as a whole range of hot chocolate flavours including caramel, cappucino, hazelnut, honey and spicy. I ended up going for the cookie flavour one and man was it good. Especially after a long day of walking around the sites, a warming cup of this is just what’s needed!

Chocolatiers

Now. You can’t go to somewhere like Bruges and not come across a chocolate shop overflowing with mountains of treats. I’m not even exaggerating, every chocolate shop had bucket loads of chocolates pilled up in the windows and everywhere the smell of melted chocolate is pumped out into the streets to pull you in.

There were so many chocolate shops there that it would be impossible to try them all in 4 days (although I did my best!). They also vary so much in variety that it depends on what you’re looking for as to where you should go. If you’re looking for cheap and cheerful there are several just off the main square that sell chocolates pick-and-mix style, which was great as you could choose exactly what and how much you wanted. They were a little more rough and ready, with not quite as much finish to them but they still tasted great!

On the other hand there were beautiful modern places like this one above, where each chocolate was carefully finished and decorated. Here they had slightly more interesting flavours, like yuzu and tonka bean, however they were a little more pricey so you might not be able to get as much for your money. What I did find though is that most shops had tasters of some sort, so let yourself be pulled in where your nose takes you and you might very well end up eating a lot on the way!

Places to Avoid

I’m not normally a very critical person; I tend to see good and bad (or pros and cons if you will) in most things. However there were a couple of places we went in Bruges that were frankly rip offs, so I thought it only right to warn you off them if you find yourself over there.

Haagen Dazs

This was a little dessert restaurant on the main square, with a cafe type set up below and a restaurant above. We were looking for somewhere to have a quick dessert after dinner one evening and so, enticed by the delicious looking menu, we decided to head in. However, once a waiter had finally come over to us to take our order, as we tried to order we were told that the things in the menu we were asking for weren’t actually available. Various elements shown in photos and descriptions weren’t actually included and some of the things that were included they didn’t even have.

In the end we decided what the hell and ordered anyway as it was late and we had sugar cravings. Whilst what they served was tasty (chocolate fondant and mango sorbet for me and some kind of waffle thing for my Mum), we paid €9 and €12 respectively and so were understandably disgruntled when tiny morsels of a similar size to that of a Michelin star restaurant arrived.  Had they been Cordon Bleu maybe we wouldn’t have minded, but given that they weren’t anything to write home about I’d recommend skipping this place and just going to one of the many good cafes or waffle shops around!

Christmas Market

Whilst it might feel like a must-do to eat at the beautiful Christmas market, if you’re there when it’s on, I’d personally recommend giving it a miss. There’s lots of beautiful gifts and toys and it’s really cute so by all means wander round, but I just wouldn’t recommend it for food. For the quantity and quality of what was being served the food was pretty pricey, and could have been found at lots of other places over town. Especially as it was very busy and cold at night in the market, you’d be better off finding somewhere you can sit in the warm to have a good meal rather than being squished standing up, trying to balance everything in your hands as you eat.

Some extra things to visit

As I said before, Bruges isn’t only about the food. There were also lots of museums, shops, churches and pretty sites to see! Even just wandering around the city was a lovely thing to do as literally every building was photo worthy. For some of the more touristy things, like the choco story museum, I’d recommend going early or late as the streets tended to get busier in the middle of the day when people were brought in on river cruises or day trips.

Salvador Dali Museum

Maybe it’s fairly natural that as an art student one of my favourite things about this trip was the Dali exhibition – but it was really really cool! I’ve always thought of Dali as more of a weird painter, and to be honest I’m not that big of a fan of his paintings, but this exhibition was full of his sketches, sculptures, illustrations and prints, all displayed in a beautiful maze of mirrors and lavishly coloured wall paper.

As with most places and attractions in the city it cost €10 to get in and €8 if you’re a student, so make sure you take a student card if you go! This one was also perfectly positioned in the centre of the city, so it’s really close to things like the history museum, ice skating, horse cart rides and the Christmas market, meaning that it’s the perfect place to pop into.

Choco Story

If you’re a chocoholic like me then you’ll want to head down to the chocolate museum. Here they had the full story of chocolate, from the history of the bean, to the production side of things and the speciality of Belgian chocolate. The experience then ended with an exhibition of some chocolate sculptures and watching a demo of how chocolates are made.

In order to fully get your money’s worth out of this you do have to engage with the material – ie read the info on the boards – otherwise you’d get around it super fast. There are some places to taste chocolate on your way round which is a great bonus, but given the number of kids running around screaming and pulling their parent’s arms I’m guessing there isn’t that much for young kids to do, so it might not be the best place for a family trip. I personally found it really interesting though (much more than the chip museum which was…. interesting… in a different way) so it’s worth a look!

Other things we did included an audio guided tour in the Bruges Historium, the historical tour of the city (which you can do yourself for free by using a map!) and a boat ride down the canals which was all well worth doing! Everything costed about €8-10, so if you’re on a budget you might have to pick and choose what you do. However, even if you don’t go to the museums or get involved in the activities on offer (like the horse and cart rides or the ice skating which we didn’t get round to doing) you can have a really good time on a budget by spending your time wandering around the stunning city, soaking up the atmosphere and getting as many free chocolate samples as possible!

Thanks for reading, I hope you have a very happy Christmas!

Emma x

 
Christmas Mug Cake

Christmas Mug Cake

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I’m a little late in posting this one – I got to that point in the holidays where I forgot what day it was! That sounds a bit like bliss: getting so lost in time off that you forget where you are, but for control-freak me it’s more of a sign that I’m spiralling downwards. I’ve been really lucky that since going to Uni I’ve been feeling fairly stable and happier than I have in a long time, however since coming back home things have been roller-coasting like crazy. It feels a little weird writing about it here as I know this content gets out to friends and family more than anyone else, and this isn’t something I’d normally discuss with them, but when I changed the angle of this blog I said I’d be more open about my mental health and so I guess that’s what I’m doing.

I know I’ll be ok, and I know this is just a phase, but anyone who’s been in this position themselves knows that it doesn’t make living it any easier. At the moment I have very little motivation to do anything, but I’m lucky that I used my normal crazy energeticness before to make some recipes I could use for times like these. So I made this a while ago, and I also wrote a long post on our Christmas cake tradition in my family, however it feels like a bit too much of a jump between what I wrote then and what I feel is appropriate now to write. But here we go…

Does anyone else have that thing where the Christmas cake is made in October, fed till December, and then eaten slowly until August? Every year we have the panic in our family of hitting December 23rd, realising we don’t have a cake, having a debate over if we do make a cake whether anyone would it eat it anyway, concluding no one probably would, then making one. And alas, it gets picked at over the following months, just to get finished off late August so we can have a few Christmas cake free months before the cycle repeats.

Now I love Christmas cake, I really do, but at Christmas. The spices, fruit and marzipan in a cake just seem out of place when eaten un-surrounded by Christmas trees and mistletoe. So I decided to bring the essence of the Christmas cake into a mug cake so it’s super easy to make, doesn’t require too much forethought and serves a single person! All the spices, all the fruit, all the booze and even a chunk of marzipan in the middle, but none of the paph and palava.

Recipe

Serves 1

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp Butter
  • 1 tbsp Brandy
  • 1 tsp Dried cranberries
  • 4 tbsp Raisins
  • 4-5 Dried Apricots
  • 1 Egg
  • 3 tbsp Brown sugar
  • ½ tsp Mixed spice
  • ½ tsp Ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp Self raising flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 tbsp Glace cherries (about 5-6)
  • 2 tbsp Almond, roughly chopped
  • 25g Marzipan

To decorate

  • 1 tbsp Icing sugar, mixed with ½ tsp water
  • 1 tbsp Apricot jam (optional)

Method

  1. Grease a 350ml mug with butter.
  2. Put the butter, brandy and fruit into a mug and microwave for 10-20 seconds until melted.
  3. Add the egg, sugar, spices, and vanilla and beat together with a fork.
  4. Add the flour, salt, cherries, and almonds to the mixture and mix until combined.
  5. Roll the marzipan into a ball and push it into the centre of the cake.
  6. Cook the mug cake for 3 minutes until it comes away from the sides of the mug slightly and is cooked through.
  7. Brush the cake with the apricot jam and then decorate with the icing and water mixture. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Nutella Viennese Biscuits

Nutella Viennese Biscuits

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I think there’s something very British about biscuits. We’ve got to the point in our culture where we have very little cuisine we can call our own other than that which we’ve appropriated from other cultures. But for some reason the hearty biscuit with a good cup of tea feels well and truly British. That said, alas, one of my favourite biscuits is the crumbly almighty Viennese biscuit, which guessing by the name is Austrian. I first came across these when I made them at school way back when. I remember them being a pain to pipe as the mixture was so solid, but they tasted divine. The other day I was re-acquainted with these in Sainsburys, this time sandwiched together with some chocolate, and I was reminded of just how good they are!

These are kind of like a more crumbly, lighter shortbread smothered in chocolate and hazelnuts – kinda like the biscuit equivalent of that perfect friend who not only is perfect but is also really nice so they’re impossible to hate. Simply put, these look amazing, taste incredible and have a texture to die for. As long as you don’t over work the mixture they’ll be as crumbly as an archaeological dig through a wet sand pit. They are a little hard to pipe to begin with, but persevere and the mixture will eventually warm up enough to pipe smoothly. If it’s really hard to begin with you might need to use scissors to chop the sticks of dough off the end of the pipping bag! I used Nutella in these as I was looking for something tasty and sticky to act as a ganache substitute in the middle (as I really didn’t want to have to bother with making something else to sandwhich them with) and it worked so so well!

Recipe

Makes 24

Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

  • 200g Butter
  • 50g Icing sugar
  • 2 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 200g Plain flour
  • 2 tsp Cornflour
  • ½ tsp Baking powder

For the filling

  • 4 tbsp Nutella
  • 100g Dark chocolate
  • 50g Chopped hazelnuts

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Take a ruler and draw 24, 6cm lines on each sheet to act as your guides for later. Then turn the paper over so the lines are on the other side.
  2. Put the butter and icing sugar into a large bowl and beat until pale and creamy. Add the vanilla and whisk again to combine.
  3. Add the flour, cornflour and baking powder into the mixture until everything’s combined.
  4. Spoon the dough into a pipping bag with a star shaped nozzle and pipe lines of the dough, using your lines you drew earlier as a guide.
  5. Put the biscuits into freezer for about 10 minutes to set the shape. Then bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes until pale golden and slightly crispy. Leave the biscuits to cool.
  6. Spread or pipe a little of the Nutella over the base of half the biscuits. Then sandwich the covered biscuits with the non-covered biscuits.
  7. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Dip the edge of the biscuits in the chocolate and then dunk the biscuits in a bowl of chopped hazelnuts. Leave on some grease-proof paper to set and repeat with the rest of the biscuits.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x