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I like…breakfast donuts

This morning I text two of my favourite ladies. I needed advice, on the important matters of jeans and makeup. I don’t have a beauty regime, unless you count washing your face with water in the shower and the months of no sleep are starting to show. Also, now that the baby is less sticky/sicky I fancy looking a little more polished and brighter. One of my girlfriends wrote back ‘with your cheekbones and bod I would wander round naked with no make up at all’. What a phenomenally uplifting thing to say. Seriously, that compliment was greater than any makeup I could buy. I feel so good and it made me realise that we are so quick to critisize ourselves and to highlight our faults and flaws. I don’t ever stop to think ‘wow look at my cheekbones’ but I could tell you all the quirks that I would like to airbrush out. Wouldn’t it be nice to just state what we love about ourselves.

So I thought I would kick it off. I love that I am punctual. If you need me to be somewhere at a certain time, I will be there. In reality I will be there early and be awkwardly standing around trying to not look too early and keen. I am good at feeding people. I know this might sound silly, but I love to make big platters and bowls of food and watch everyone tuck in. I love that food opens up conversation and makes everyone feel a little warmer and rosier. I don’t find it stressful to make tons of food or bake cakes and can happily host a spontaneous dinner party. Finally I am hardy. If you need IKEA furniture building, your house packing up, a shop opening, cement pouring, or a harvest of apples picked..count me in. I can happily toil away for days on end as long as I am caffeinated and occasionally fed.

It turns out that I am also pretty good at baking donuts. These little beauties are breakfast donuts because they are packed with apples and carrots, chia and oats. They are topped with honey and bee pollen. They are shaped perfectly for on the go with a coffee in hand as you cycle to work (this may be illegal so maybe don’t do this!). I promise you, you will like yourself a little more if you make them and if you share them then others will like you more too!

Ingredients (makes 9)
125g instant oats
125g flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp stewed apple
1 grated carrot
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 tbsp chopped dried fruit
3 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 egg (or 1 flax egg)

2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp bee pollen

Method
Preheat your oven to 160C
Place the egg, oil, carrot, apple and chia into a large bowl and whisk together
Sift in the dry ingredients and the oats and fold together
Spoon into a well greased donut pan
Bake until golden brown (approx 12-15mins)
Turn out immediately onto a cooling rack
Whilst still warm brush with honey, wait 1 minute and brush again
Sprinkle with bee pollen and leave to cool

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Three ingredient chocolate mug cake

What is it about mugs that make them cosy? Some of my favourite things are served from a mug: coffee, tomato soup, hot toddy…and now this cake!!!! I made a cake, in 3 minutes, with three ingredients. This is one of those total potluck moments, I wanted to have a little experiment and the cake angels made that experiment pay off. The other thing is that this cake contains an egg & everyone says that you should eat eggs for breakfast so I say you should eat this cake for breakfast!

I wasn’t going to post a recipe today but I had to share this one because its too fun not to try. Its deliciously soft and fluffy. Not quite a cake texture, not quite a pudding. I would imagine it is similar to a souffle…but I have to admit to never having tried one. Its just a yummy little chocolatey moment. You could add in a splash of coffee, top with blueberry chia jam, add in grated apple. Have fun & get your mug on x

Ingredients
1 egg
1 banana
2 tsp cocoa

Method
Place the three ingredients into a blender
Mix quickly and then pour into a mug leaving a little room at the top for expansion
Microwave for 3 minutes checking every minute
Dust with cocoa & enjoy

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Cinnamon breakfast buns

I really dont have much of a sweet tooth. I like my chocolate as dark and bitter as possible and my favourite way to end a meal is with an espresso. But sometimes there are those days when only a cinnamon bun will do which is how I found myself kneading dough yesterday evening as the little one had bath time with her papa.

It was so crisp and sunny yesterday here and it felt like possibly the last of the summer heat in the sun. All we wanted to do was drink coffee and be outside. So thats what we did. We cycled our bikes, we played in the grass, we hung out with friends. But then, as the day was winding down, I felt a little lost somehow. Sometimes its like that on a Sunday night when you say goodbye to one week and you perch on the brink of the next. There are all the lists to be made and things to be done. You realise how much of last weeks ‘to dos’ will simply roll right in to this weeks. You wonder if you achieved enough or if you could have done more. Last night I was missing things. What exactly I’m not entirely sure. I was just missing the easy familiarity of life. I wanted the TV to be in my mother tongue and my family to be nearby. I wanted to be eating different food and to be hanging out in streets that I know like the back of my hand. In those moments it is so easy to compare everything and to wish the evening away, and believe me, we have done that many many times. So instead, I baked cinnamon buns. We lit some candles, snuggled up and watched a Nordic show (Lillehammer.. have you seen it?) and suddenly this flat felt more like home and we were a little team, things were cosy and the week ahead just had to wait a few hours.

To me there is something so cosy and comforting about baking and especially baking something so familiar plus the heady smell of sugar cinnamon didn’t hurt either. These buns are not your classic uber sweet syrupy version. They are more wholesome, more bready, more Nordic, more breakfasty but I promise they still come with the same amount of belly warming hygge.

Ingredients (makes 12)
Use the same recipe as here for the dough
In addition you also need:
4 tbsp coconut oil or butter
2 tbsp cinnmaon
2 tbsp pureed apple
6 tbsp unrefined sugar
1 banana (or an additional 2 tbsp butter)

Method
Once the dough has proved roll it out until you have a large rectangle
Preheat your oven to 170C
Blend the coconut oil (or butter), apple, banana, cinnamon and sugar together
Spread over the dough
Roll the dough up into a log (starting with a longer edge)
Once fully rolled, place seam down and slice into 12 slices
Place the rolls into a well greased baking dish
Bake for 30mins

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Billionaires Shortbread

Billionaire shortbread or as i like to call it: the baby has a cold and is teething so she can only sleep upright on me & I am so tired my own teeth hurt and I need something sweet to get me through the afternoon shortbread. Seriously, I know the baby has bone cutting through her gums and that up till now I have tried to protect her from pain (bare one unfortunate dropping her off the bed incident) but can I get some sympathy too? Just for a second, I just need a hug…you can find me face down in a mug of coffee. 

Honestly though, when I’m this tired, as much as I want to power eat espresso beans & cake I find that I have to take extra care. If your body isn’t getting rest, then at the very least it needs nourishing. I’m making sure to do a quick strength training session and to walk outside for a few miles each day. I’ve been running before dawn on the mornings that I have managed to extricate the baby from my bussom. 

Every morning I start the day with hot water. I started drinking hot water because my history teacher drank it in school & I had a major crush on him. I would love to tell you that I started because of the liver cleansing properties etc etc but nope, this healthy habit is the result of a teenage infatuation. Thankfully I have a great knowledge of the World Wars & I drink hot water allday everyday which must be a win win. Then comes coffee, because I’m human. Lately I switched to oat milk because the Swedish firm Oatly brought out “barista” oat milk. It’s the only non dairy milk that i like in coffee. It doesn’t separate or float or taste oily. It’s creamy & rich & you can froth it. Seriously go Sweden!

Most days are filled with food tasting & various versions of thrown together Buddha bowls. But by the afternoon I need a little something. Women more disciplined than me may have a green juice & 12 organic almonds. I on the other hand have created billionaires shortbread. This sweet treat saves me in those exhausted afternoons when all you really want to do is lie down in bed and eat cadburys mini rolls.

I figured if millionaires got a shortbread with a caramel layer, then billionaires would get a salted caramel chocolate later. It’s a modified version of a millionaires shortbread. I would call it a healthy version but what is healthy? One mans poison and all that. What it is, is that it is made with wholesome ingredients in their natural form. Foods that your body can recognise and that it knows what to do with. And in this case, sugars that occur naturally which means no sugar crash an hour later. It’s rich and decadent. It feels like it should be terrible for you but it isn’t. It’s an instant mood booster & a perfect tea time tray bake to share (if you feel like it).

Ingredients
10 tbsp oats
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 banana
20 pitted dates (medjool or other soft ones work best – if you can only get dried dates then soak them in hot water for 20mins before using)
3-4tbsp hot water
0.5tsp salt (optional)
6 tbsp oat cream (or other cream)
60g dark chocolate (70-90%)

Method
Place the oats into a food processor and process to a flour
Add in the coconut oil and the banana and processor until you have a dough
Press the dough down into a layer in a lined baking dish (should be about 3 cm thick)
Bake for 15mins and then set aside to cool
Place the dates into a food processor, whilst the dates blend slowly drizzle in the water until you have a thick paste. You don’t want it too runny
Heat the cream in a pan, remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stir until the chocolate has melted
Add the chocolate cream and the salt into the food processor with the date mixture and blend together
Leave to cool and set and then spread over the oat base
Set in the fridge or freezer for 20 mins and remove 5 minutes before eating

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YNBO- barely baked bakewell tart

Val has exited the tent. I realize that she was probably never going to win, but I did have a soft spot for her. I love that fact that baked from memory and challenged Paul “we like our Danishes a little soft in the middle in our house”. It also turns out that she makes a Bakewell tart weekly. Who makes any tart weekly? Let alone a Bakewell? To be perfectly honest I don’t think I have ever tried bakewell tart, but I do love the combination of fruity jam, marzipan and a biscuity base.

I thought about tackling danish pastries or filo pastry this week, but filo seemed like a crazy crazy idea and most filo that you can buy ready made is plant based anyway, and danish pastries just don’t excite me. Lets not lie, if there was only one option for a Scandinavian treat it would OBVIOUSLY be the cinnamon bun!

So this morning I set about making the YNBO version of the bakewell tart. Knowing that the case would be holding marzipan and a sweet jam layer I didn’t want to make the dough too sweet. I used oats, ground down into a flour, added ground almonds and then used a ripe banana to bind it all together. A teaspoon of coconut oil and one date for added stickiness and I had the perfect consistency. If you can’t tolerate nuts you could easily not add them. This dough tastes amazingly good, not too sweet but somewhat decadent. It would be great rolled into balls or made into bars as a post or pre workout snack….

I pressed the dough into mini muffin tins and baked for 15 minutes until they were golden and crunchy. Then all I had to do was fill them with a spoonful of homemade marzipan and top then with a spoon of extra thick cherry and damson chia jam. So simply, so delicious. These barely baked bakewell tarts are the perfect afternoon treat, paired with a rich espresso and shared with friends.

 

Barely Baked Bakewell Tart – makes 24 mini tarts

Ingredients (base)
200g oats
3 tbsp ground almonds
1tsp coconut oil
1 ripe banana
1 date

Method
Preheat your oven to 160C
Place the oats into a food processor with the almonds and grind down into a flour
Add in the banana and the oil and process until a dough begins to form
Add in the date and pulse until combined
Press the dough into mini muffin tins and bake for 15mins
Remove and allow to cool

Ingredients (Marzipan)
150g blanched almonds
1.25 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp rosewater

Method
Place the almonds into a food processor & pulse until you have a fine flour like powder
Add in the syrup & rosewater
Pulse until you have a dough
Roll into balls or any shape you like
Store in the fridge for up to a week

For the chia jam I used this recipe but substituted the blueberries for half cherries and half damsons. I also added an extra tbsp of chia to make it extra thick.

 

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