Tag: chocolate

vegan chocolate brownies
03Dec

Super fudgy vegan brownies

I don’t identify myself as belonging to any particular food tribes, whether it is clean eating, paleo or vegan. Sincerely, I love butter too much. This is not to say I don’t enjoy cooking and trying recipes from all of these tribes. Cooking with butter, cream and even meat is very easy as they have deep, rich flavours. But maybe I think like this because I am so used to cooking with these ingredients and any attempts to cook vegetarian or vegan recipes is something that takes a lot of effort. Fruit puree is what keeps bringing me back (made this dairy free cake a while ago), substituting it for dairy and eggs in a multitude of things.
2 mins read
1337 Views
26Apr

Banana split with brigadeiro fudge sauce

Things I am loving at the moment: I no longer listen to the radio. Some may think this is a bad thing but in my car I have a very narrow range of stations, mainly consisting of songs that are on the chart playing on a very annoying loop. I downloaded an app called Castbox and have started to explore the world of podcasts. My absolutely favourites are The High Low and Dear Sugar Radio. I can’t get enough of Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond. I want to go out and have a beer with them. Weekends without my phone. It actually died and I didn’t even try to charge it. I forgot about it and it was all good. Re-watching old films that I was too young to understand when I watched it first time around: As Good As it Gets, Donnie Darko and Good Will Hunting eBay. I am planning my sister’s hen do whilst on my night shifts. I am going for a mermaid theme. All the glitter and streamers arrived on time and on point. Condensed milk. I’ve decided that ganache is well over rated as a sauce and that brigadeiro sauce should take the crown.
2 mins read
1123 Views
27Sep

Chocolate yoghurt cake

It has been more than a month since my last post. It was not planned – I said I was going to do a whole month of Brazilian food to celebrate the Olympics – but it did not turned out that way.  After a break in Cornwall and then a string of family members coming over to stay, it felt like I left life up in the air, and when I arrived back home it all came crashing down. You know, piles of unopened letters, cleaning to do, I couldn’t even start to think about recipes for the blog. In fact this has been the first week in a whole month that I have opened my computer. Then I don’t know why but amidst the chaos I decided to make one of my least favourite baking recipes: cake. I am cake’s biggest fan, just have a look at my Pinterest page and you will see beautiful cakes, frosted like a sculpture, with the perfect rise and colour. I dream of emulating that, however this is rare as I am by nature a chaotic cook. But baking cakes is almost like a science, you need to do things by the book.
3 mins read
931 Views
31Mar

Banana and dark chocolate chia pudding

I  laid in bed yesterday thinking since when did I become such an angry, inpatient person? I have been snapping at everyone recently and even beeped my horn at a slow driver yesterday – a big no-no in England. The feeling of guilt ate me up afterwards. How must I have made that driver feel? What if it was an old lady or a teenager learning how to drive? I am a strong believer in “owning up”, in the sense that I don’t like using external reasons to blame for my own actions. But this week I am going to have to make an exception and blame my period. The changes are palpable, not only in terms of emotions but also in regards to my stomach. My diet has changed considerably in the last few months, I have been trying to cut down on refined sugar and starchy foods and as a result I have been craving chocolate less and less, or in fact any sweet stuff. Result! But do you ever feel like sometimes food rules your emotions? My period then came and like clockwork, chocolate is all I thought about. Food is an emotional thing, and my body
3 mins read
978 Views
16Feb

Easy peanut butter ice cream

As a petite girl I often have to have my clothes altered to fit me better. I was sharing this with a friend and said I would love to learn how to sew so that I could do it all myself. Said friend was baffled, “why would you want to do that? It is too fiddly to do and hard to learn”. Yes, but it means I can alter clothes to fit me…I even started to dream of making my own dress. I can understand my friend’s line of thought, it is much easier to go shopping for a dress, or even do it as I often do, shop online.  I love that our modern world offers us so much convenience, giving us the time to go do other things we enjoy. But to be very blunt here, I don’t get people that don’t get the feeling of achievement when creating something, be it made of fabric or a nice chocolate cake.These days you can find absolutely anything that your heart desires in a shop, so it doesn’t surprise me that homemade items are highly appreciated presents. I can cross the road and buy a tub of ice cream for less money than
3 mins read
1112 Views
30Mar

Spiced chocolate Easter bread

Easter is a pretty big deal in my family, it’s like second Christmas both for religious reasons but also because most of us get quite a good amount of annual leave from work so we land at my parents’ for a few days. People take Easter food seriously over here with their legs of lamb, cream eggs, simnel cake or anything with marzipan. I am not exactly a fan of either lamb or marzipan though. What I look forward to are the hot cross buns, warmed up sweet cinnamon buns spread with butter.  It is just simple enriched bread with spices and raisins with a flour cross on top, but for the British these little buns have a huge meaning and date back to the 12th century Britain, they are traditionally eaten on Easter weekend and they were traditionally hung on kitchens on Good Friday and people believed they would never go mouldy. Queen Elizabeth I decreed that hot cross buns could no longer be sold on any day except for Good Friday, Christmas or for burials. They were simply too special to be eaten any other day, so people started to bake them in secret in their kitchens. I love
5 mins read
1069 Views