Pomegranate, Pistachio & Coconut Dark Chocolate Bark - Bakemas Day 11

Christmas without chocolate? I don’t think so!

Green Veggie Pesto & Goats Cheese Pancake Pizza

I know Pancake Day was a few weeks ago but mostly that day just re-establishes my love of pancakes...cue me making them every day for the next month. Okay not quite, but I have managed to succeed in keeping a relatively consistent intake of pancakes since then mostly in the form of standard lemon and sugar crepes and my cookie cookie dough pancakes. I’ll be honest I ate cookie dough pancakes twice the weekend following pancake day although I did use coconut sugar instead of muscovado and caster and really that’s just the same as eating fruit right?

Orange, Almond, Pomegranate & Dark Chocolate Fluffy Oatmeal/Porridge - Bakemas Day 11

I’m either really early for Mondays breakfast or incredibly late for Sundays, or I could just eat it for dinner because breakfast for every meal is fine by me.

Ginger & Pomegranate White Wine Spritzer - Bakemas Day 10

I guess some people would say I’m pretty boring when it comes to drinks because I pretty much only drink water, coffee and sometimes hot chocolate. It’s not that I don’t like other drinks I just don’t ever really want them, although every summer I do go through a ginger beer phase, usually when it’s actually hot over here.

If I’m going to venture into the "not coffee and water" drinking territory it’s probably a good idea to just pick things I’m obsessed with then go from there and I’m definitively loving pomegranates right now but I do have my mum to thank for the wine being added to this.

Brie, Bacon & Pomegranate Crostini - Bakemas Day 7

This crostini is perfect for party season and gatherings. Having something on the table that’s quick to whip up and looks like you put way more effort in than you did can’t hurt right? I mean if you think about it really this is just incredibly fancy cheese on toast.

Grilled Pineapple, Lime and Chilli Quinoa Salad

I’ve had a pineapple sitting in the kitchen for a while now, don’t worry not too long it’s only just ripe. The pineapple originally was for a recipe that I just cannot for the life of me get right, it tastes amazing like addictively amazing but it always looks completely horrible so I figured I should take a step back for a few weeks and tackle it again some other time, it will be revisited though and it’ll definitely be worth the wait.

I was looking through last year’s diary writing down all the ideas I ended up skipping because they weren’t fully formed or I wasn’t in the mood to make so I could have them all in one place and came across spiced pineapple salad, yep, not fully formed, I get easily distracted. Anyway, I’ve been on a bit of a chilli kick recently, got a lot of those in the fridge too also involving another recipe I won’t be posting yet because I might look a little bit obsessed with chocolate cookies which side note: I kind of am.

Anyway back to chillies; I don’t dislike spicy food, I just sometimes don’t see the point in it but ever since I went to Devon and pretty much everything vegetarian I picked up involved chillies, especially this chickpea roll from some nice lady in a little market in Dartmouth, this market basically sold honey, meat, rugs, pastries and fish, I have had dreams about it ever since and definitely need to try and re-create it, but I’ve kind of been converted to adding a little spice to my food so there is no better time to make a “spiced pineapple salad”.

With the time change, lighter evenings and the random bouts of sun in England my brain has definitely been tricked into thinking it feels like spring outside so I’ve already started craving green leaves and all things salad related. I seriously love a good quinoa salad, I feel like I make more quinoa salads than I do other mains but that’s probably not true, I probably just think about quinoa salads more than anything else.

This quinoa salad is sweet and spicy and tangy and I’m not sure what more you could ask for. The pineapple was the perfect ripeness it almost didn’t make it in the salad because I was picking at it while I was shooting, although that would have been a pretty sad pineapple salad minus the pineapple. I refrained and finally grilled it which just made it even more delicious and add the tangy lime and spicy chilli dressing on top while still hot and I could probably just eat a bowl of the pineapple on it's own as dessert. Dessert-like elements in salad can't really be a negative.