As some of my regular readers have pointed out… I’ve been a bit slack on the blog front recently. Yes, I’ll admit it, I have.

Work has been busy lately, but that’s really only half the excuse. If I’m truthful, it’s because the weather got nice. Really nice. Like 29°C nice. Apparently the UK has been hotter than Spain over the past week (seriously, when does that EVER happen?!). So I dusted off last summer’s shorts from the bottom of my wardrobe and have been basking in this glorious warmth.

And it’s not just me either, half of London bared their pasty white legs along with me and we all crammed together in the city’s sparse parks, armed with sunscreen, cider and icecream. I think we’re all a little scared that this is the best weather we’ll get all year (touch wood) and we’ve gone all out in trying to embrace it - apparently Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, and all the other large supermarket chains, sold out of icecream and BBQ food over the weekend.

So, in keeping with this summer theme and preparing you for any future empty supermarket aisle dilemmas, here’s my best homemade summer salad recipe. It’s my own original creation, based on some of my favourite salad ingredients, and it’s that delicious I could eat it every day.

Ingredients:

- 1 red capsican (or 1/2 red and 1/2 a yellow capsican), thinly sliced

- 2/3 of a 400g tin of whole corn kernels, drained and rinsed

- 1 cup of red cabbage, thinly sliced

- 1 cup of iceberg lettuce (use the crispy middle leaves, rather than the outer leaves), thinly sliced

- 1 large carrot, julienned or thinly sliced (preferably not grated as the consistency is too wet)

- Good quality egg-based mayo (I use this one from Sainsbury’s but this Best Foods one would work for you NZers)

Method: 

Throw all the ingredients in a large bowl and add the mayonnaise (start with 2 tablespoons of mayo and then gradually add more if needed, until all the ingredients are just nicely covered). Mix well and serve alongside any main meal.

I find it goes nicely with a piece of steak or some marinated chicken. I often have it with Dijon Roast Chicken (you can find that recipe here) and a few roast potatoes. Enjoy xx

I try to eat as little processed food as possible and regularly buy organic produce and/or make my own when I have the time. We don’t keep muesli bars in our house, don’t eat any processed sugary breakfast cereals and don’t buy unhealthy snack foods like potato chips (although, I’ll admit that biscuits are my kryptonite).

If we’re hungry between meals we often eat fruit, mixed nuts or a piece of toasted Vogels with sliced tomato or organic peanut butter. But I’m always on the look out for healthy snack recipes that branch out from the norm and these homemade muesli bars tick all the right boxes.

They’ll take you ten minutes to whip up and they’re much healthier and cheaper than the processed supermarket bars that are full of chemicals and preservatives.

These are crammed full of fruit and nuts so they’re full of protein, low GI, low fat and energy boosting and you can tick off a couple of your 5+ a day. They’re also sweet, so they’re perfect for those mid-morning or mid-afternoon sugar cravings.

It’s such a simple recipe and it’s suitable for everyone - you can add and remove whatever you like to create your own flavours. I went with coconut and cranberry this time, but next time I might try raisins and a few drops of vanilla essence. Other options are chocolate chips, coffee beans, orange zest, dried apricot, dried banana, pumpkin seeds… the possibilities are endless!

Ingredients:

- 2 cups of raw nuts (I used almonds, brazil nuts and walnuts)

- 2 cups of pitted dates (or you could try using prunes)

- 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds (optional)

- 1 cup of whatever you desire (I went with cranberries and also added a large handful of shredded coconut)

Method:

Process nuts in a food processor or blender until they are finely chopped. Add dates and process again until the dates are finely chopped and the mixture starts to stick together. Next stir in the sunflower seeds if you’re using them and add your desired ingredients (cranberries and coconuts in my case). Line a small baking dish with baking paper and press mixture evenly into the dish. Refrigerate for one hour and then slice into bars. Store in a container in the fridge.

For the first time in my 24 years on this earth I didn’t get an Easter egg from Mum. But, all has been forgiven… because I got these instead!!

You see, since we’ve been living in the UK Whittaker’s has brought out not just one, but two, new flavours of chocolate:

1. Peanut Butter

and

2. Berry and Biscuit

But because we’re on the other side of the world I haven’t been able to whip into my nearest NZ supermarket to grab some (okay so I probably would’ve been lining up outside on the day they were released) but have still had to read all of my friends’ Facebook comments and statuses on just how good they really are. For a chocolate lover, this kind of torture is the equivalent to ripping my toenails out one by one.

Luckily, my Mum’s a fellow chocolate lover (addiction, obsession… whatever you want to call it is fine by me), and she fully understood the urgency of the situation. She sent over a block of each and they arrived today. We’ve already ripped into them and all I have to say is that their delicious little lives will be very short-lived in this household.

One of my favourite easy dinner recipes. They’re creamy and flavoursome while still being reasonably healthy. And they’re perfect for lunch the next day too!

INGREDIENTS:

- 1 cup cooked rice

- 1 cup shredded roast chicken

- 1 can black eye beans, rinsed and drained

- 2 green onions, finely sliced

- 1/2 red bell pepper, diced

- Handful of fresh coriander, chopped (optional)

- Juice of 1 lime

- 1/2 tablespoon chili powder

- 1 teaspoon ground cumin

- 1/2 minced garlic (stuff out of the jar is fine)

- 2 cups grated cheddar or mozerella

- Jalapenos (optional)

- Sour cream

- Salsa

- 6 flour tortillas/burritos

- Oil, for grilling

DIRECTIONS:
Mix rice together with chili powder, cumin and garlic. Add remaining ingredients except for cheese, jalapenos, salsa and sour cream. Sprinkle cheese over tortillas, leaving 1/2-inch border around edges, then arrange chicken and rice mixture down the center of each tortilla. Dot the top with sour cream, salsa and jalapenos. Fold edges over so they overlap in the middle, leaving the ends open.

Fry wraps one at a time in a large pan, with oil, over medium heat (not too hot or they will burn). They’ll need about 2-3 minutes each side. Serve on their own or with a crispy fresh salad.

Winston Churchill loved his food (one of many vices), and he once famously rejected a dessert saying “this pudding has no theme.”

I refuse to cast the same dire fate on you and instead I’ll give you a pudding with multiple themes. 

It all started with a trip to Berlin where I met a very charming struesel at a bakery near our hotel. I haven’t been able to erase it from my mind since and haven’t been able to hunt down anything similar in London, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and make something similar at home.

It was shortly after this that I discovered the Whittaker’s recipe competiton on Facebook and wanted to come up with something a little bit creative and original.

After giving it some thought, my third and final inspiration came from the fact that I really love brownie and Si really loves cheesecake and from all of this, a dessert collaboration was born.

Let me introduce you to: Fudge brownie with a caramel cheesecake layer and stuesel topping. It’s a very long name, so if you can come up with something a little bit more clever than I’d love to hear your suggestions. Please leave me a comment below.

Here’s the recipe debut! I hope you’ll make it, try it and enjoy eating it, at least in Churchill’s honour.

Ingredients:

For the Brownie:

- 1/2 cup flour

- 2/3 cup cocoa (preferably dutched but normal is fine)

- 200g butter

- 1 and 3/4 cup caster sugar

- 3 eggs, lightly beaten

- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

- 330g Whittaker’s Dark Block Chocolate (or any other good quality dark chocolate if you don’t live in New Zealand)

For the cheesecake filling:

- 300g cream cheese

- 1/3 cup of sugar

- 1 egg

- Half a can of Nestle Caramel Condensed Milk (This is optional, if you’d like to give the cheesecake a caramel flavour) 

For the chocolate streusel topping:

- 2/3 cup of sugar

- 140g butter, softened

- 2 and 1/3 cups of flour

- 1/2 cup cocoa (preferably dutched, but normal is fine)

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1 egg

(NB: This makes quite a lot of streusel so I used approx one third of it to sprinkle over the top of the cheesecake brownie and then froze the rest to use another time - it could be used a cheesecake base.)

Method:

Grease the sides and bottom of a large baking dish (I used a lasagna sized dish).

Melt butter and sugar in a pot over low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved.

Take off the heat, add chocolate and stir until chocolate is melted. 

Cool slightly. 

Add egg and vanilla and stir until well combined.

Sift in flour and cocoa. Mix well, until fully combined.

Pour mix into your baking dish and set aside.

Next, make your cheesecake layer by using an electric mixer/beater to combine all of the ingredients together in one large bowl.

Carefully pour the mixture over the top of your brownie.

Now is the time to preheat oven to 180.

Next, make your struesel topping.

Put all of the ingredients, except the egg, into a large bowl and use your hands to combine until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. 

Add the egg and use your hands again to combine. The dough will come together to form larger crumbs, that look like those in the picture below. 

Sprinkle these crumbs evenly over the top of your cheesecake layer in the baking dish.

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven at 180 for 40 minutes. Insert a knife to check that it comes out clean - both the brownie and cheesecake layers should be cooked. If they’re not, increase the cooking time, inserting a knife to check the progress every five minutes.

Remove the brownie from the oven and allow to cool on the bench. Once it has cooled you can cover and store in the fridge. This is best after it has been in the fridge for a few hours and the cheesecake is completely cooled.

As a regular at NZ’s Ozone Coffee Roasters and a former employee of one of their partners back in the Naki, I know them well enough not to expect much… except fantastic food, friendly service, a warm and inviting atmosphere and absolutely flawless coffee.

I’d roped some friends into accompanying us for lunch here on Saturday, with promises of all of the above, so it was lucky that Ozone delivered on all four.

We were the first to arrive and were greeted within seconds of walking through the door. The cheerful, young blond man that greeted us became our waiter and made sure we were well looked after - even stopping to say goodbye to us after he’d changed out of uniform and was heading home for the day.

We chose a cosy booth on the second floor of the cafe and took our time checking the place out before taking our seats. The decor is trendy and modern, with an industrial-style edge and nifty Kiwi knick knacks spotted throughout the place. The cushions and Taranaki Hardcore wall poster were our favourites!

Once we sat down, our waiter instantly delivered funky crate bottles of water and clipboard menus to our table before asking us if we’d like anything else to drink. I opted for a long black and Si went for a flat white, which arrived while he was in the toilet - and even though I declined, I was delighted when the waiter offered to take it away and make a fresh one when he was ready. That’s really going the extra mile in terms of customer service!

I’m no coffee connoisseur but I can tell the difference between bad and good coffee and this one definitely fell into the latter category. Their beans are freshly roasted on site, and it’s these strong, rich flavours that make NZ reknown for its coffee culture. It’s great to see London finally catching on.

Our friends arrived and were equally impressed by the coffee, as well as a little flustered by all of the temptations on the menu. I changed my mind more times than I can keep track of but I finally settled on the Prawn pasta (Prawn & prosciutto parpadelle w green chillies, fresh tomato, crème fraiche & chives) and never looked back. The ingredients were fresh, the pasta was perfectly cooked and the sauce was rich and creamy. Everything you’d want for a cruisy Saturday cafe lunch.

A friend went for the Eggs Benedict and was a little perplexed to find it arrive on homemade bubble and squeak hash cakes instead of muffins, but did enjoy it. I personally think it’s great to see a cafe taking a few risks with their breakfast menu and vying away from the standard bacon and eggs on toast. I’ll definitely be back to try the Orange & Cardamom French toast with rose honey, mascarpone and berries!

And there’s no doubt I’ll also be back many a time while I’m here for my NZ coffee fix… and perhaps a slice of their New York Cheesecake that I remember so fondly (I know what you’re all thinking… but that missing piece wasn’t me, I swear!).

I’m sure you’ve all noticed by now that my blog mostly features cakes, cookies and anything else that’s sugary and sweet. And yes, I won’t lie, my fridge and cupboards do often look like the inside of Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

But, like any normal person I also eat three meals a day, including dinner every night. It’s just very rare that I remember to, or feel compelled to, share my dinner recipes on here. Perhaps it’s because I make fairly standard, basic homely meals that I figure are the same as everyone else’s. However, when I cook for friends I do get compliments on those “fairly standard, basic homely meals” (either they’re too polite or they’ve actually thought my cooking’s a little bit of alright), so here’s me making a pointed effort to share those dinner recipes with all of you.

The first I’ll present you with is Butter Chicken Pie. We’ve just come out of our first UK winter, which I bravely fought my way through with an army of comfort foods, so be prepared to find plenty of winter warming recipes on here.

This recipe makes one very large pie, enough for 5-6 people, or two medium sized pies, each one enough for 2-3 people (you can freeze the second one, uncooked, for an easy dinner another night).

Ingredients:

- 3 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

- 1 large kumara (sweet potato), peeled and cut into chunks

- 2 cups of shredded roast chicken (perfect for when you’ve got chicken leftover from last night’s roast meal)

- 1 jar of butter chicken sauce (such as Pataks, or we use Tesco home brand)

- 600g-700g ready rolled shortcrust pastry (or enough to cover the bottom and sides of your pie dish

- 400g ready rolled puff pastry (or enough to cover the top of your pie dish)

Method:

Boil kumara and carrot in a pot until cooked. Drain, and then add the shredded chicken and butter chicken sauce. Stir together.

Preheat oven to 180 celcius.

Roll your shortcrust pastry into your pie dish, covering the bottom and sides (leave a little hanging over the sides). Pour in the butter chicken mixture and cover the top of the pie with your puff pastry. Pinch the edges together and cut off any excess pastry from the sides. Carefully cut slits into the top of the pie to vent steam.

Bake for 50 minutes in the middle shelf of the oven until pie is golden brown on top.

We serve ours with simple steamed veg, such as broccoli or beans.

A few weeks out from Easter and a lazy Sunday afternoon… what else is there to do but bake Hot Cross Buns?

The thing is, as many of you probably know, the ones in the supermarket just don’t cut it any more. Some bakeries still do an okay job, but they’re not cheap. Homemade ones are just easier, cheaper and yummier. Conundrum solved.

The recipe is courtesy of the March issue of Good Food mag but I’ve changed it up a little to suit my own tastes, and it’s my version that you’ll find listed below (I’ve eliminated the “mixed peel” as I’m not of a fan of the bitter taste it adds to the traditional hot cross buns. I’ve gone with orange juice and zest instead).

They’re a little time consuming to make, but if you read the recipe and plan it out in advance you’ll be okay - ie. while the dough is rising you can go off and fold some washing, do your grocery shopping etc. Other than that, they’re fairly simple to make and they came out perfect on my first go. They’re packed full of sultanas, diced apple and cinnamon and the apricot glaze just gives them that little bit of somethin’ somethin’.

One of these lightly toasted under an oven grill with a little (okay, a lot) of cinnamon butter (cinnamon mixed with softened butter), and a cup of coffee… what more could you want on a chilly March morning?

I got a little lazy toward the end and decided not to muck around making the crosses to go on top. Skipping them won’t affect the taste, but if you want to make yours look pretty then I recommend going the extra mile and making the crosses.

The batch makes 16 regular sized hot cross buns and I’ve frozen half of them for another time.

Ingredients:

For the buns:

- 300ml full-fat milk

- 50g butter

- 500g strong bread flour (this is essential - avoid using your usual baking flour)

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 75g caster sugar

- 1 tablespoon sunflower oil

- 7g sachet fast-action yeast

- 1 egg, whisked or beaten

- 100g sultanas

- Grated zest of one whole orange, and its juices

- 1 apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped

- 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

For the cross:

- 75g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

For the glaze:

- 3 tablespoons apricot jam

Method:

Heat milk in the microwave until piping hot, then remove and stir in the butter until it is fully melted. Leave to cool until it reaches hand temperature.

Put the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a large bowl. Push to the sides, making a large opening (a “well”) in the centre. Pour in the warm milk mixture, then add the egg. Use a large spoon (preferably wooden) to mix well, until you have a sticky dough.

Tip onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for five minutes, until smooth. Lightly oil the large bowl and place the yeast back into it and cover with cling film. Leave in a warm place for one hour, until the mixture has doubled in size (if the house is cold, I turn the oven on in advance and then, turning the oven back off, I leave the door of it open and rest the bowl on that for an hour).

(Don’t throw the cling film away just yet) Add the sultanas, orange zest, orange juice, apple and cinnamon to the bowl. Use your hands to knead the ingredients into the dough, making sure everything is well distributed. Cover the bowl with the cling film again and leave in a warm place to rise for one hour more, until doubled in size again.

Divide the dough into 16 roughly even pieces and roll each ball on a lightly floured surface. Arrange the buns on baking trays lined with baking paper, leaving enough room between each one for them to expand.

Cover with a clean tea towel and set aside for another 40 minutes to one hour. In the meantime, make the crosses by mixing the flour with five tablespoons of water - adding one tablespoon at a time until you achieve a thick paste. Spoon into a piping bag and pipe lines along each row of buns, and then in the other direction, to create the crosses.

Bake for 20min on the middle shelf of the oven, until golden brown.

Gently heat the apricot jam in the microwave, to melt and use a pastry brush to spread it over the top of the warm buns. Leave them to cool slightly before eating them.

Photo source: Good Food Channel