Tag: sweet

09Dec

Black grape and walnut mince pies

I have fallen in love with black grapes recently. It happened by accident, I decided to buy them after being tired of the same apples/bananas/satsumas routine we have here every weekend. They are not only a great snack for sweet-tooths like me but I have also been adding them to a lot of different foods, from crumbles to granola. So why not add them to my most detested christmas treat? Yes I hate mince pies.  And it is tough being a mince pie hater here as it is a huge part of English christmas. They are literally everywhere, people are giving it to you as gifts, bringing them to work as a tea time snack…And you can get the really basic ones to the really fancy ones from high end shops, but it’s just never gone down well with me. It’s always just tasted like raisins, covered in sugar, wrapped in pastry. But this year I decided to tackle them my way. My recipe holds back on the dried fruits and sugar and, most importantly, there is no suet in sight! It takes a little patience to get the the mincemeat and the pastry ready, but you can start preparing
4 mins read
821 Views
23Sep

Brown sugar and almond popcorn

So we are back. We have good excuses for being away for quite a few weeks…I think getting married is a good excuse for having a little annual leave, right?!?! Especially when you are the bride and the wedding planner. My family were a huge help the night before – and Karla drove from Germany to be my bridesmaid! They did the flower arrangements, set up the dessert table and ironed the linen. But now it is back to normality. It is exciting to be married, I want to do exciting things every night, and obviously life can get in the way of that sometimes. One thing we have always loved doing is going to the cinema together. It is not cheap to go to the cinema though and the food prices are astronomical. And I can’t not munch on something whilst watching Matt Damon go to Mars. So I always pit stop at the supermarket before hand to get ingredients for my favourite cinema food combination: minstrels and salty popcorn. Minstrels are crispy coated chocolate drops and I mix this with popcorn I pop at home. This time I decided to do something different: my own popcorn. It is
3 mins read
550 Views
17Aug

Cassava cake {sugar free, dairy free, gluten free}

  I can’t really explain why I have felt so nostalgic of happy childhood days these past few weeks. I have been re-living those moments through food. So this is what this recipe is about. I am sure this recipe has also featured in Mariana’s childhood as it it is typical from where we come from. Cassava has already featured on quite a few of our recipes (pão de queijo, chips, tapioca ice lollies…) and I never tire to use it in recipes, I love the flavour and most importantly, it is an essential ingredient of the Paleo diet! Recipes made with cassava always have an interesting sticky consistency. So when you make this cake don’t expect for it to be airy and soft, it will be dense. Think brownie consistency. The recipe I am sharing is something I developed based on two family recipes, and it does not contain sugar, dairy or gluten. Cassava cake 4 eggs 200ml coconut milk 500g cassava Pinch of salt 150ml maple syrup or honey 2 tbsp of ghee or coconut oil, melted Fennel seeds Method: 1.Preheat the oven to 180C. Cut off the ends of the cassava, peel and grate it. Using a
2 mins read
768 Views
18Jun

Homemade Coconut Milk and Coconut cream with strawberries and rhubarb (no sugar, dairy free, paleo)

I think everyone that is familiar with this blog knows that I have the biggest sweet tooth. And I am going to guess that most people’s first experience in the kitchen is around a sweet recipe. Who here has never helped their mum or grandma growing up by separating eggs or greasing a cake tin? Back home from the moment I was able to use the oven unsupervised I would religiously make a chocolate cake every Saturday, always the same recipe. The only changeable factor was that I would sometimes make marbled cake rather than a chocolate one. With time I grew in confidence and started to experiment with tarts, pies and mousses, but in my early stages of cooking I mostly made sweet recipes. Savoury and mains is a side of cooking that started much later for me. So does that prove my point that I am just a little bit partial to dessert? I am in the middle of a hard core paleo diet and there are a lot of restrictions around sweets which is not always fun but it does motivate me to cook recipes that are healthy and still appease my sweet tooth. We already use
4 mins read
761 Views
07May

Upside down rhubarb and Earl Grey cake {dairy free, sugar free, gluten free – paleo}

A few weeks ago I got a package from Mariana, inside was the latest ingredient to feature in our Anglo-German food exchange. It was Earl Grey tea, is there anything more British than that? The package also contained a note from Mariana saying that she chose said ingredient to make my life easier. I did get a bit nervous because although Mariana wanted to make my culinary journey a little easier all I could think about after I got the tea was cake, which is a hard task for me at the moment as I am following the Paleo diet consequently any cake I eat needs to contain no flour, milk or sugar. So it was now beyond a simple culinary exchange, it was a full on challenge to whip up a paleo cake. Milk is not actually an issue, I haven’t used milk for years in my kitchen and I can now find so many great substitutions. But what about flour and sugar? This challenge entailed a lot of scientific research on Pinterest. I studied and tested a few recipes made by others at first in order to get used to ingredients, before trying one that was 100% mine.
3 mins read
605 Views
23Mar

Apple pancakes

As a chid I was very fussy when it came to eating. My grandmother used to live with us when I was growing up and this meant me and my siblings were spoiled rotten in regards to food. She was a willing chef who always gave us options at meal times such as “would you like fish or pasta with plain tomato sauce?” I am not even goin to tell you what our response was… It may sound absurd but my food habits only started to change when I moved to Germany, yes at 21! I am ashamed to say that the first time I ate prawns of my own accord was when I was living with my now husband. During my first few months over here I worked as an AuPair and had to eat whatever the family I worked for put on the table. I was quite surprised at the time by how the 3 children enjoyed all sorts of food incuding curry. And the youngest one was only 1! So it was time for me to change. One day the family called me down for lunch and I had my first cultural shock. It was sweet lunch.
3 mins read
642 Views