Banana Matcha Ice-Cream Recipe

There are processes I go through when trying out a new recipe, the first stage starts with that excitable joy. That hope that this it will be the best cake/dessert/dish I've ever made, I'll take it to dinner parties and pass it on to my children in recipe books. Then there is that middle stage, that, I'm not really convinced by this, why are they telling me to use 5 bowls and three pans - that seems excessive, right? Is it supposed to be that consistency? It looks a bit like it'd curdling/burning/falling apart... Then you follow it through to the end, and it's actually not quite good - this ice-cream recipe summed up that process completely.

When this was a mushy greenish paste, I was completely not convinced. But it actually tastes really good - don't let the odd, yellowish green consistency put you off!

Keep reading for the recipe...

recipe: lemon and thyme bars

I find it interesting how your tastes change as you get older. The twenty-five (ew) year old me lives for the sharpness of lemons, the tang of olives, the acidic taste of white wine, and the bitterness of black coffee; all things that the eighteen year old me would have turned her nose up at. At eighteen, I wouldn't have gone near a gin and tonic with a twist of lemon, last night found my hunting the cupboards because I couldn't find any gin!

It is weird that now I am twenty-five I think that the bittersweet taste of a lemon perfectly sums up summer. It reminds me of drinking cloudy lemonade outside on hot days, of squirting it on fresh cooked fish, and eating lemon ice-lollies.

Anyway, when this unsuspecting little recipe popped up on Pinterest the other week, when we were having that amazingly hot weather, I ran out as quickly as I could and bought a batch of lemons... I did not regret it. 

For the recipe, keep reading;

homemade pina colada ice-cream recipe!

Look, I could've easily gone with a if you like dancing in the rain, you'll like my ice-cream sort of title, but thought I'd be chill, because I was hoping I'd get your attention anyway with this bowl of deliciousness.

This is no recipe of mine, but one from Nigella Lawson, whose way of describing food disturbs me (something too sensual about it for my British sensitivities) but her recipes are always some of the very best. I suppose that's why she's good at what she does - that and she looks great in a wrap dress and was married to a multi-millionaire but I digress.

It's so freaking easy to make, it tastes phenomenal, and when you say you've made your own ice-cream sans ice-cream maker, people think you're some sort of culinary genius, when you're really just a bit lazy.

For more pictures and the recipe, keep reading;

as close to clean as it gets: raw vegan chocolate bars

I've discovered my new favourite treats, and they're these delicious little bars. They feel like a cross between a flapjack, tiffin or caramel shortbread - but they're nowhere near as decadent as that! 

For more pictures and the recipe, keep reading;

Super easy seasonal iced biscuits!

If you're blogger, you should remember to post your content when it's most relevant, really, shouldn't you? Like, who wants a Christmas gift-guide on the 24 December? Anyway, I'm being a shit blogger, because I completely forgot to post my Easter biscuits, and now Easter is almost a month behind us, but hey-ho, I'm showing you them anyway, because they look goddamn adorable, I think.
My mum called me on Good Friday and showed me the biscuits she'd made, asking if she wanted me to help ice them... Who am I to resist?! 

The recipe for the biscuits itself, I can take no credit for - my mother made them, and I only iced them! But she reliable informed me that the recipe she used was this one from The Pink Whisk and they tasted amazing when baked to perfection. She also tells me that she used vanilla powder in place of vanilla essence! 

INGREDIENTS AND EQUIPMENT:
- 1 pack of Royal Icing or Icing Sugar
- Water at room temperature
- Several piping bags (or sandwich/food bags if you're cheap like me haha)
- Several small bowls and teaspoons
- Food colouring
- Cocktail sticks

1. Mix the icing to the instructions on the packet, depending on what brand you use, most of them will tell you how much water to add to the icing sugar. We measured out the water and then added it until I got the consistency I wanted. At this point, you want the icing to be quite thick, thick enough that you can pipe it and it will hold it's shape.
2. Split the mixture between bowls evenly, and add the colouring. For pastel colours, add a very small amount of the colouring, and mix well.
3. Spoon some of the thick icing into the piping bags (leaving some for flooding the biscuits) and pipe around the edge of the the biscuit shape to create an outline. For shapes like the eggs, pipe the desired design (like stripes or zig-zags).
4. Set aside and allow this outline to dry until solid and hard.
5. Add more water to the remaining icing in the bowls to create a more liquid consistency, it should run off the spoon with ease.
6. Using small teaspoons, add a small amount of the runny icing inside the outline you've already made.
7. To move the icing into the corners of the shape, tilt the biscuits or gently move with the back of a teaspoon. This is also where the cocktail sticks come in useful, to push the icing into awkward corners and to get rid of air-bubbles.
8. Allow to dry until completely hard.

These went down an absolute treat in our house, I must say! And there was not one child in sight, haha, but I imagine they would go down very well with kids. I think the yellow chicks and the blue bunnies were my favourites, and if you're interested, we got the biscuit cutters from Waitrose, they do a great selection of seasonal ones for Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc.

Have you got a favourite biscuit recipe you go for?

- recipes -

healthy choc-chip cookie alternative: avocado, banana + chocolate cookie recipe

As you may or may not know, I am trying to eat 'sugar-free' for lent. This is flexible, though, I give myself the weekends off, in that if I want to eat white flour or what have you, I'll do it on these days and it's really just a kick up the bum I needed to get my eating habits way back on track. I've lost about 6lbs since starting! Because of this, I have been trying really hard to keep away from cakes, and sugary things, but occasionally, I crave a sweet, cake-like something. 

I scoured blogs, Pinterest, Instagram and websites for some lower-sugar sweet treats, and I'm building a good repertoire. I've got some excellent oat and apple flapjack bars and some whole-wheat banana bread that I'll be sharing soon, but after posting these on Instagram, I got a few requests to share you, so I'm going with this one first!

Anyway, a few notes on these cookies... They are good. However, I personally only really loved them when they were fresh out of the oven and all melty inside. The original post I adapted this recipe from said she preferred them out of the fridge - and to me this made the cookies too thick and a bit claggy - but my mum loved them like this! So who knows, you should definitely try them and see what you think. I love them hot, with a dollop of creme fraiche or some vanilla ice-cream...

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 medium avocado
- 1 medium sized banana
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp of honey, or more or less, depending on how sweet you like your cookies
- 50g of dark chocolate, chopped into chunks (I used 90% cocoa solids)
- 1/2 cup of cocoa powder (about 60g)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F/Gas Mark 4.
2. Mash a ripe avocado and banana in a bowl, then use a hand mixer (or you can do it in a food processor) to make the mixture as smooth as possible, I found a wooden spoon didn't quite cut it.
3. Add the egg and honey, and mix well with hand mixer or processor.
4. Add the cocoa powder and baking soda, and mix in with a spoon.
5. Stir in chocolate chunks with a spoon, and then I put my mixture in the fridge for 10 minutes, as it was a bit sloppy to handle, well.
6. Dollop spoonfuls onto a lined baking tray, I used an ice-cream scoop that I use for cupcakes, etc. The recipe I based this on said it yielded 10 cookies. I managed to get 9 pretty decent sized cookies. You could make them smaller and get more.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, the cookies will go sort of shiny on top, and the aren't as wet looking any more. They are very dark, almost black cookies, so it's hard to tell how they're cooking, so keep an eye on them!
8. Remove, allow to cool and go a bit more solid, before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
9. Store in the fridge, and eat with a glass of milk, obviously!

Some notes on the original recipe from The Smoothie Lover: I have no idea where I would even get coconut sugar, so in the notes she says you can use banana instead, so I went with that. After tasting it, though, I found that the mixture was kind of bitter for me, so added the honey as well, and this combination is perfect! I am considering trying them with no avocado next time, and just two bananas.
I also normally wouldn't advocate the use of a hand-mixer, but I found it was hard to get the mixture smooth with just a spoon, so I would recommend it, or a food processor, etc.

I had lots of requests on Instagram for the recipe, so let me know what you think or share with me if you try this out... I'd love to see what you thought of them!

the perfect breakfast: chia seed and peach jam porridge

A few months ago, I shared with you my recent affection for porridge, and how to make it really quickly. My affection is unwavering, especially since discovering this somewhat decadent breakfast that I can't help but wanting every morning. It's perfect for cold and crisp weekdays, the peach jam cutting perfectly through the milky porridge, warming you well and filling you up until lunch. I've also discovered the magic that are chia seeds - full of protein and omega 3's, they're great soaked in milk or water, and get a really weird, jelly-like texture to them.

INGREDIENTS:
- 1/2 cup porridge
- 1 cup semi-skimmed milk
- 1 heaped tablespoon of chia seeds, with enough milk or water to cover them.
- 1 tablespoon of peach jam

1. Measure out 1/2 cup porridge, and 1 cup semi-skimmed milk, in a microwaveable bowl. You don't have to use cup measurements, it's the ratio that is important here.
2. At this stage, measure out your chia seeds and cover them with milk or water (I normally do this in the cup I measure the porridge and milk out in). Stir to make sure all the chia seeds are covered in liquid and set aside.
3. Microwave the bowl of porridge and milk on full power for 1.5 minutes, then take out and stir well.
4. Microwave the porridge for a further 3.5 minutes, taking out and stirring well every 30 seconds, taking care not to let it boil over, the stirring is very important here.
5. When the porridge is thick and creamy, take it out and stir the chia seed mixture into the porridge, or just place on top.
6. Add jam to taste, and eat!

boxing day breakfast or brunch: drop scone pancake recipe

Well hello everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas Day and are gearing up for 2015 nicely. I thought I'd show you all a somewhat indulgent idea for a breakfast on a chilly Boxing Day morning.. 

A drop-scone (or an american style pancake, if you like) is one of my favourite things to make. They're so quick, so easy, and so amazingly tasty. They're a thousand times better than the ones you buy pre-cooked, and the batter only takes minutes to whip up. They'd be an amazing thing to pull together for a New Year's Day breakfast (er, brunch?) if you're all feeling a little fragile, and unlike croissants, require minimal effort. The hardest part is basically wondering how many you can scoff down before anyone notices.. 

INGREDIENTS:
(makes about ten-twelve decently sized pancakes)
- 125g self-raising flour
- pinch of salt
- 25g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 25g melted butter
- 100ml milk

1. Sift flour into a bowl, and yes, this is a rare recipe when I actually sift it. Generally I can't be bothered, but no-one wants a lumpy pancake. Stir in the salt and sugar.
2. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and add the eggs. Pour in a little of the milk and begin to beat.
3. Gradually add in the rest of the milk until the batter has a smooth consistency and drops drop from the spoon.
4. Place butter in a microwabable bowl and heat until melted. When batter is ready to be cooked, add the melted butter and stir in.
5. Heat a frying pan until a bit hotter than a medium heat and add something to stop pancakes sticking (I usually use sunflower oil, but just a little.)
6. Using a tablespoon or an ice-cream scoop, spoon the batter into the frying pan and cook.
7. When the pancakes are beginning to bubble, and have gone solid around the edges, flip the pancake over and cook until golden brown.
8. If using a small pan and making several batches of pancakes, keep a plate warm in the oven with the pancakes on. Serve immediately and eat hot with lots of butter, golden syrup, blueberries, nutella....

Recipe adapted from one by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

a lesson in patience, or how to make croissants

I think one of my defining characteristics is my lack of patience. With people, at appointments, in shops, at traffic lights.. and when cooking, particularly. So it's weird that I decided two weekends ago to make croissants. I've been wanting to try making them for so long, as there are few things I enjoy more than breaking into a hot croissant, slathering it in butter and jam with a fresh orange juice on a lazy sunday morning. After browsing recipes constantly, I decided that I needed a good two days off to do it. Two weekends back, I had my weekend off, and decided to go for it.. 

It was so worth it. I really enjoy those Jus-Rol croissants that you get in a can, mum used to make them for us as treats or at Christmas when we were little, so I really wanted these to be better than that. I can safely say that they are SO much better than that. 

I just used the first recipe I found, which happened to be Paul Hollywood's recipe - I figured his was probably a good recipe to use - however his recipe does has a lot of waffly wording in it, so I found a more condensed version on the uktv.co.uk website. I've combined the two below, with my own additions, so I'm not taking credit for the recipe but I've added my own comments...

INGREDIENTS
- 500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
- 10g salt, plus a pinch for the eggwash
- 80g caster sugar
- 10g instant yeast
- 300ml cool water
- 300g chilled unsalted butter (a good quality butter, I used President)
- 1 medium egg to glaze

1. Place the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon, slowly mix in a little water until the mixture forms into a pliable dough.

2. Place the dough on a floured surface and knead well until it feels elastic, I find about 15-20 minutes of good kneading.

3. Place the dough in a lightly floured plastic bag, and place it in the fridge for an hour.

4. Return the chilled dough to your floured work surface and roll it into a rectangular shape, around 60x20cm.

5. Roll out the chilled butter into a rectangle about 1cm thick between two sheets of baking parchment, around 40x19cm.

6. Place the butter rectangle at one end of the the dough rectangle, covering two thirds of the dough.

7. Make a small cut in the butter (not going through the dough) and fold the dough third with no butter, over the butter layer. Then fold the remaining dough and butter third over this, to make a neat rectangle. 

8. Pinch the edges to keep the butter in, and then place in a floured bag and return the dough to the refrigerator to chill for a further hour.

9. Flour your surface again, and roll out the dough to a rectangular shape, around 60x20 cm. 

10. Fold one-third of the dough into the middle, then fold the other third down over it, so you have another rectangle. Return to the plastic bag and refridgerate for a further hour.

11. Repeat this process of folding and chilling two more times, then place in the bag again and chill overnight or for eight hours.

12. On a floured surface, roll out to about 45x30cm and cut into two equal strips and trim the edges with a knife. 

13. Cut the dough into squares and then into two triangles, or into triangles with a 12cm wide base and 15cm high.

14. Place the dough triangles on a floured surface with the narrow point facing you, pull it down slightly to length the crosisant. Then, starting at the wide base end, roll the triangle up over itself, you could then curl them in on themselves if you like. 

15. Place the shaped croissants on baking trays lined with baking parchment and leave to rise for 1.5-2hrs. 

16. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/Gas 6. 

17. Make an egg wash with a pinch of salt, and lightly egg-wash the croissants. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown. 

How amazing do those layers look?! The lamination with the butter makes them taste amazing, they don't even need butter when eating them, which I really like to use. Just jam, because when they cook the butter in the layers melts and makes the dough so moist and buttery. 

There is no getting away from it, they do take a long time to make, but yes, they're definitely worth it! I know recipes that take days always say 'oh but they're worth it' and sometimes I go through all the faff and thing you know what, they're not worth it the hassle. You do need to have the time on your hands, but these croissants were hand-down the best pastries I've ever eaten. I've even got some dough chilling in the fridge as we speak, I'm making a batch this weekend and freezing them so we can have them on Christmas morning! I just ate with a selection of jams (pear and damson were the absolute best) but you could definitely have them with Nutella or something, or even put chocolate inside to make some pain au chocalat... 

So, to summarise my thoughts on the homemade croissant: some things that are a right faff are definitely worth inhaling eating, maybe I'm not as impatient as I thought, you can get a surprising amount of present wrapping done between rolling turns, I could never get tired of these.

quick and easy breakfast porridge

Porridge is not one of those things I ever considered really for breakfast, I have to say. When I was little, mum used to make it for us before school on cold mornings, or my Grandma would make it when we went to visit her, but the only way I liked it then was with copious amounts of sugar and milk. I stopped having it when I realised there were more fun breakfasts out there, like coco pops...

Flash forward to uni and my friend Amy used to eat a lot of those little instant porridge pots. They never looked that appealing to me, but who knows, I busy was enjoying my sausage bap with extra ketchup. In the supermarket a few months back, I had a flash of intrigue and threw one into my trolley, and it promptly sat in my kitchen cupboard until the weather turned cold enough for me to warrant trying it. 

And it wasn't a pleasant experience, is all I can say. It was pretty much like eating glue, I don't know if thats because I had to add water, or what, but it was like tasteless glue in a little paper cup. More determined this time around, I set out on a mission to buy some oats, and give it a go again. A couple of mornings later and I have it down fine art! I do it in the microwave, because, really, I can't be trusted with fire and gas at 7.30AM.

I'll include my little recipe here, but it's really not a recipe, more a ratio.

INGREDIENTS
For one large serving:
- 1/2 cup oats
- 1 cup semi-skimmed milk
- Toppings of your choice!

1. Place a 1/2 cup of porridge oats in a microwavable bowl. For ease in the morning, I use a 1/2 cup measure, because who can be bothered weighing things that early in the morning? Google tells me it's about 90g.
2. Add the milk to the bowl and microwave for 2 minutes. I microwave it in 30 second blasts, and mix in-between, to make sure all the oats are being covered by the milk.
3. Leave to stand for about 30-60 seconds, whilst finding/preparing your toppings. 

My go-to favourite-topping is a good helping of jam, currently rotating between peach, plum or pear jam, with a handful of raisins or nuts, depending on what I can find in the morning, thought I've experimented with some slightly less healthier versions that involved chocolate chips, but my favourite is with lots of jam. It sort of feels like I'm having rice pudding for breakfast, and I can imagine I'm somewhat decadent.
Have you got any topping recommendations? I'd like to upgrade my porridge-game..

the almost perfect cinnamon bun + recipe

The other week I was in the shower, and I cracked open a new bottle of Korres' Vanilla Cinnamon shower gel. Whilst singing along to my music and lathering up, I realised that the smell reminded me exactly of cinnamon buns. So after pottering about for the rest of the day, occasionally stopping to smell my arms because they smelled that good, I decided to just give in and make some cinnamon buns. 

I searched around the internet for a good recipe, and came across this one from the Guardian website. It seemed like a good option, requiring less proving that most recipes, and using ingredients that I nearly all had in at home.

INGREDIENTS:
For the buns:
300ml whole milk (I only had semi-skimmed, and it worked fine)
1tsp ground cardamon seeds (about 25 pods)
50g butter
424g plain flour
7g fast action yeast
60g caster sugar
1/4 tsp fine salt
1 egg, beaten lightly
oil, to grease

For the filling:
75g softened butter
50g dark brown sugar (again, I only had light brown, it was fine, a little less treacly)
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

For the icing:
125g icing sugar
1.5 tbsp milk
(note: I did not have any cream cheese, or I would've made cream cheese icing!)

1. Put the milk and ground cardamom seeds in a small sauce-pan and bring to just below the boil. Take off the heat, stir in the butter, and then leave to infuse.
2. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. When the milk is no longer hot, and is just warm, make a well in the dry ingredients and the egg. Stir the egg in, then pour in the milk through a strainer. Stir until it comes together to make a soft dough that pulls away from the edge of the bowl.
3. Oil your surface well, and your hands, and knead for five minutes. It is a very soft and wet dough, I found, but resist adding more flour. I didn't have a dough scraper, but I recommend using one for this!
4. Wipe out the bowl and oil it lightly, then return the dough to the bowl. Cover, and leave somewhere warm for 30 minutes. (They suggest a cold oven, with a bowl of hot water, but we left hours at the back of the stove-top whilst the oven was on, and that worked well.)
5. Whilst the dough is proving, make the filling by beating all the ingredients together until soft and easily spreadable. (Resist from eating, this mixture tastes so good.)
6. Also whilst waiting, grease a cake tin.
7. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a rectangle roughly 35 x 25cm. Spread the  filling mixture evenly across the dough, then roll dough into a sausage shape, starting from the long edge (like you would a swiss roll). Cut into eight even slices.
8. Arrange the slices in a tin, evenly spaced, and leave to prove again for 30 minutes.
9. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

So there we go! They're best eaten fresh, obviously, and don't keep amazingly well, and would be much improved with some cream cheese icing and not the sugar icing that I made - but they hit the spot and weren't that hard, despite the multiple proves, etc. Next on my challenge list are croissants and doughnuts...

homemade flatbreads + recipe

This post starts with how most thrown-together recipes start: my mum making dinner and me wanting to bake something. She was making her ever-so-perfect chicken tagine the other week and I was in the mood for carbs, those on diets know the cravings come quickly and without warning.  

A quick google later, we settled on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's flatbreads, following this recipe on the wonderfully named blog, Mean Mothercooker. They were best eaten hot, straight from the pan, with a bowl of tzatiki and a spoonful of houmous as accompaniment.

YOU'LL NEED:
- 250g plain flour
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 150ml warm water.

STEPS:
1. In a bowl, combine flour and salt. Add the oil and water until it forms a dough.
2. Knead on a floured surface for 5 minutes until the dough feels elastic and smooth.
3. Return to the bowl, cover, leave to rest.
4. When you're about to eat them, roll dough into a sausage and divide into 8 rounded balls of dough.
5. On a floured surface, roll the balls into circles around 3mm thick.
6. Heat a heavy-based, non stick frying pan (we used a griddle pan) until it is very hot.
7. Turn the heat down, and place the flatbreads carefully in pan. Let the first side cook for about 2-3 minutes, until the dough no-longer sticks to the pan. Flip, and repeat but for 1-2 minutes on this side. Eat immediately.

It's really very simple, and they're so great eaten hot. 

dead easy pie crust (with blackberry filling)

This is my mum's dead-easy pie-crust recipe. Perfect for when the shops have shut on Sunday afternoon and we want to make something with our foraged blackberries and we don't have any fat in so we'll just butter and shove it all in the oven because the roast will be ready in thirty minutes. Eaten with copious amounts of cream, it's pretty good. Basically I love pies, hate the faff of making pastry. 

YOU'LL NEED:
- 8oz plain flour
- 4oz butter (you can use lard or trex or something, if you want)
- 40ml water
- 1-2 tbsp of sugar
- 450g/1lb of blackberries, washed
- A few tablespoons of sugar, about two to season the filling, and another two for the pie

STEPS:
1. Add butter/fat to the flour. Rub with fingers in a lifting motion, which sounds weird, I know - here, Delia explains it better than I can.
2. When it's all combined, with no big lumps of butter left, use a small amount of water to bring it altogether.
3. You can chill it now, if you like, but this will probably be made in our house when there is no time to spare. Like, a neighbour has turned up at 5.30PM with a bag of apples/plums/raspberries and we all fancy a pie for dinner and we have no pre-made pastry in the fridge (shh). What I'm saying is, like sifting flour, things rarely are left to rest in our house.
4. Roll out to a thin layer, and wet the rim of your pie-dish with some water.
5. Place all your filling into pie-dish and cover the blackberries with a couple of tablespoons of sugar.
6. Using the rolling pin to help you, place the pie-crust over the dish. Press down around edges and make a small hole to let steam out.
7. Brush a bit of water on the top of the pie and sprinkle with another tablespoon or so of sugar.
8. Bake until golden-brown - if it's browning a bit too much, give it a foil hat.

It's not going to win me any prizes in the bake-off, nor will it win a beauty contest. Delia and Mary Berry would most definitely not approve. But Nigella might have approved of all the extra-thick double-cream I ate with a second helping at 10PM later that night.. 

blackberry yoghurt cake + recipe

I have the lovely Ruth to thank for the idea for this cake. I posted a few days ago asking what on earth I could do with my blackberries, that wasn't jam, crumble or pie (even though I definitely made all those things with them!) and she replied, saying that she was going to try a blackberry yoghurt cake with hers..

This sparked an idea and I immediately thought of Smitten Kitchen's lemon-yoghurt-anything-cake (a favourite of mine, I seriously love her cake recipes, they're always a winner). The recipe she used was adapted from an Ina Garten one, and I've changed up hers enough that I'll write it out here for you (because I'm nice like that).

YOU'LL NEED:
- 193g / 1.5 cups of self-raising flour, plus 2 tbsp flour
- 225g / 1 cup of plain natural yoghurt (about 1.5 of the 150g Yeo Valley Natural Yoghurt pots!)
- 201g / 1 cup of golden caster sugar
- 3 extra-large eggs
- 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
- 125ml / 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
- Some rinsed blackberries (I didn't weigh mine, but I think I had about 250g, roughly, you will probably want more, though)
- A small amount of icing sugar to decorate.

STEPS: 
1. Preheat oven to 180C, line a cake tin. I cheat and use these kind of liners by the way, as I hate greasing/cutting baking paper to shape.
2. In a large bowl, combine the oil (do the oil first, it makes the other stuff stick less), yoghurt, eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract. Whisk it all together.
3. Measure out your flour in a separate bowl, and gradually add the flour into the wet mixture, whisking until it's all combined. You can do this step in a mixer, I suppose, but I wouldn't after you add the blackberries, as they'll get broken up too much.
4. In the bowl you measured out your flour in, place the blackberries. Using that extra bit of flour, about two tablespoons worth, make sure as many of the blackberries are coated in the flour as possible. This helps them not to sink in the cake.
5. Carefully fold in the flour-coated blackberries to the cake mix. Do this until they're just combined, being careful not to squish them.
6. Pour/scrape into your lined tin and put in the oven.
7. Bake until the top is golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. We found we needed about an hour and five minutes, but I would check periodically to make sure. We also covered with foil after the top started to brown, so it didn't burn.
8. When the cake is cooked, remove and place on a cooling rack. Using a small sieve or tea-strainer, lightly dust with icing sugar.

I'm aware that in the photos it looks like all my fruit has sunk - it really hasn't! The flour thing works, trust me - just for some reason, I distributed the blackberries really badly. Like, they're nearly all in one side of the cake - I don't even know how that happened.. That is why I say you'll probably want more, because they weren't evenly distributed and you know that wouldn't stand in the bake-off.

Anyway, let me know if you try this! It's a really good cake, like a giant muffin, and has a really good texture, very light. I am pretty much just a giant fan of anything that uses yoghurt, sour-cream or buttermilk, I love the texture it gives to the cake.

homemade mango chutney: recipe

The other day I made mango chutney. I make it sound so simple, don't I? However, stoning 4 giant mangos, your house stinking of vinegar and standing over a hot stove on a very hot English summer evening (read: humid!) is less than easy. It was worth it, though, when you end up with this most amazing chutney. I made about five jars (but have given a few away already) and I've been spooning it liberally onto curries and barbecue chicken ever since. 

A lot of the mango chutney's you can buy weren't sweet enough for me, or were too vinegary. which I'm not a huge fan of, so I wanted to make some that was exactly how I wanted.

I browsed a lot of recipes, and consulted my mother who is the oracle of all things jam and chutney related, and she said this BBC Food one would be a good one to try, so she helped me make it. I'll repost the recipe here:

YOU'LL NEED:
- 4 large mangoes, peeled, stoned, and sliced
- salt
- 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
- 450g (1lb) of caster sugar
- 2 baking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
- 1 tbsp English mustard powder
- 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
- 600ml (1 pint) of apple cider vinegar (the recipe calls for white wine vinegar, but the apple cider vinegar is a bit more mellow, so I used that because I don't love vinegar)
- 1 tbsp cayenne pepper

STEPS:
1. Put the peeled, stone and sliced mangos in a large bowl and sprinkle with salt. Leave overnight. In the morning, drain the juice and rinse all the fruit.
2. Put the garlic, sugar, apples, mustard, ginger, vinegar and cayenne pepper in a pan and over a low heat, dissolve the sugar.
3. Bring to the boil and add the mangoes. Simmer for 45 minutes until the chutney is thick and syrupy, keep stirring so the mixture doesn't catch on the bottom of the pan. (The recipe says to simmer for 30, but after testing a bit on a cold plate in the fridge, it wasn't nearly thick enough, so we left it for about 45 minutes.)
4. Spoon (or use a jam-funnel) into sterilised jars. Allow to cool and seal. 

I gave a jar to my brother and his girlfriend, who are quite the foodies,  and my mum gave one to a friend of hers who likes chutneys, but nothing spicy, and they both agreed it was good! So I am pretty pleased, generally. It's got the perfect sweetness, with a bit of a vinegary kick that makes it just right.