Categories
Baking Recipes Vegetarian

Charitable Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins

Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins

For some reason I’ve been finding it really hard to get motivated to blog on working days. I don’t know why this is, but I’m sure it will pass. The other negative effect of my new job is that I have less time and energy to cook lots of new things. As such, over the coming days I shall attempt to counter this blog-rot and start bringing you new and exciting savoury meals to try. However, baking is so therapeutic and relaxing it can be done whatever the situation, no matter how lacking in inspiration one finds oneself. Perhaps this is because with baking one generally follows a recipe so there is no real expectation of ingenuity where the base recipe is concerned.

Categories
Healthy Eating Italian Recipes Vegetarian

Insalata Caprese

Insalata Caprese

Some of the best things to eat during the summer are simple pasta salads. They are so light, healthy and delicious in an almost subtle manner – as such Insalata Caprese epitomises the summer pasta salad. I realise this dish doesn’t usually include pasta, but I thought rather than having it as a starter it would be better to bulk it out and really enjoy its deliciousness as a lunch, or indeed as a light dinner. This was my exact thought process as over the past few days I’ve had rather meaty meals like cawl and fragrant chicken curry – a dish which I’m considering “re-mastering”. As such I wanted a meal that was light, tasty and vegetarian – this seemed the ideal candidate.

Categories
Baking Recipes Vegetarian

Juicy Plum Muffins

Plum Muffins

I thought I’d continue in the same vein as my last post and bring you yet another delicious recipe with which to use your lovely juicy plums. This will be the last of the plum themed posts for now though, as although we had a very large amount of plums we only actually made muffins and chutney – 11 jars of the stuff. I think the next summer fruit recipe I’ll tackle will be Blackberry jam, but I need to find time to go out and pick them first.

Categories
Recipes Vegetarian

Wild Plum Chutney

Plum Chutney

Alright, alright, these aren’t wild plums, but they were picked out in the open as I mentioned in my last post, from plum trees hanging over the walls of other people’s gardens. At the weekend my girlfriend and I saw two such trees, one just around the corner from her house and another on a walk we went on which took us past Chequers – a residence of the Prime Minister. From two small branches of each tree we managed to alight more than 4 kilograms of plums, this seems quite a lot to pick from someone else’s tree, but they were already slightly over-ripe and there was no sign of them getting picked. The fact that they were slightly over-ripe made them even more alluring, especially for chutney making.

Categories
Baking British Recipes Vegetarian

Chocolate and Banana Loaf Cake

Banana and Chocolate Bread

I am back from my sojourn at the house of my girlfriend laden with frugal recipes cheap enough to make one’s mind boggle. Seriously, this is the only place where describing something as ‘cheap’ would go down well, and I like that. I really have been a busy-bee for the past few days – I’ve been walking, cycling, cooking and snaffling free plums from trees overhanging their owner’s garden walls. As a result you can expect recipes for plum chutney and plum muffins to appear over the coming days – they are seriously good.