Chocolate Gingerbread Granola Truffles - Bakemas Day 15

Spiced Caramel Nutty Biscuit Bites - Bakemas Day 14

Spiced Chocolate Chip Welsh Cakes

I got a cough, I know what you’re thinking, is that special news? Maybe not special but it’s definitely news. I never get coughs, and when I say never I mean never, blocked sinuses yes coughs not so much. I say cough, I’m pretty sure it was a chest infection because there was dizziness, a fever, everything ached and all kinds of funky coloured stuff being coughed up, there was also a little bit of throwing up but we won’t get into that. I spent the majority of my week moving from my room to the living room in a constant state of napping with random TV shows in the background I didn’t care to pay attention to, which if you know me is also really rare because I really despise naps. I also spent two days only whispering and another sounding like I’d been strangled so all around it wasn’t a pleasant time!

One of the other problems I had was I completely lost my appetite, I always find it takes a while to go back to eating normally after that but the first thing that made me want to eat more than a bowl of rice or soup was some Welsh cakes my mum bought, so after that I just had to make some.
It’s probably been about 4 years since I’ve made Welsh cakes, aside from the 3 batches I’ve cooked up in the past week but the day I made these just coincidentally happened to be St. David’s day. I did test out another flavour which is all of the yummy and will be posted at some point in the future but I couldn’t resist adding chocolate to a batch (well I had to make up for all the chocolate I missed out on while I was ill), I’m surprised it’s never crossed my mind before and I also couldn’t resist adding all of the spices.

Something that Welsh cakes are ideal for is snacks on the go, they travel extremely well and don’t take up a lot of room, not that we had any time to take them out for a snack as they didn’t last long enough but if you can resist them till the next day they keep well and you can’t really squish them as easy as a muffin.

Cinnamon Popcorn

Autumn is the season for curling up on the sofa by the fire with a cosy blanket and coffee in hand. And we all know what goes well with snuggling up on the sofa, movies, more movies and snacks, always snacks! A spontaneous movie night with a friend led me to make this in all its cinnamon glory, you can't go wrong when it comes to cinnamon...unless there's not enough, then that's just all kinds of wrong.

It's only recently that I discovered baking popcorn after flavouring it so it's not sticky and soggy and it makes a world of difference. I might be three thousand years late in discovering this I'm not sure, I don't think I really know anyone who makes their popcorn from scratch, if this is old news to you just carry about your day as you were but if not you need to come to the realisation...and fast, that this could change your life. If you want some advice on the perfect popping technique go here. I also have a recipe for Peanut Butter Caramel Popcorn which is processed sugar free and just as delicious.

Healthy Brownie Pancakes (gluten free)

Pancake day may be over but tis the season!

I made this the first day of my sugarless month because I was dying for something chocolatey and they definitely hit the spot. I'll give you fair warning that these are quite hard to flip and they don;t always end up looking like your typical pancakes, so don't worry if they bunch up a little bit. If you have a good non stick pan this should be a lot easier, I am in dire need of a new one. They taste just as good however they look.

Homemade cocoa puffs (sugar free)

I've always had a strange relationship with cereal, when I was younger I was the child that hated milk and would sit there pouring the milk off the spoon without letting the cereal fall off. I also hate my cereal going soggy, so breakfast was a balance of carefully pouring the milk off the spoon and speed eating so the cereal didn't turn to mush. Don't even get me started on when your milk starts tasting sugary from the cereal or even worse...chocolatey. When I was a teenager I pretty much only ate cereal dry, I'd take it to school in a bag and sneakily eat it during lessons. I am now a full on granola obsessive and the best part...it takes forever to go soggy, I keep meaning to try and make a dupe of my favourite granola because I have to go to a specific tesco just to get it. You may have seen me? I'm the freak standing at the checkout with 6 boxes of the same cereal and 5 cartoons of almond milk.

Enough of my cereal tales; I will warn you now, I spent quite a while rolling these balls and oh man is it time consuming. Next time I'd just give up and try cooking them as blobs, can I trade mark that now? Cocoa blobs; coming to a store near you!

Chocolate chip "porridge" cookies (sugar free) with homemade chocolate chips

If I was a london commuter I would 100% be the person that runs on the train just as it's about to leave looking a little flustered; with a coffee in one hand that almost spills everywhere, and a bag that almost gets caught in the door. I'd be the person who after walking up the train, sits down, finally finishes rustling about then proceeds to eats her breakfast on the train; and this is what I would take. I imagine everyone would be sneakily glancing at me with looks of slight annoyance and disgust that I'm eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast; little do they know these cookies are almost like non-messy porridge to-go with all the taste of a cookie and non of the processed rubbish. Now don't get me wrong I wouldn't eat cookies for breakfast everyday...I'd eat pancakes too!

Peanut butter oatmeal cookies (sugar free)

Nutella energy bites

I was obsessed with making energy bites last winter, I'd eat them instead of chocolate. I'd only ever made chocolate flavoured ones once and they were amazing but it was so long ago and I seem to have no recollection of the ingredients or where I got the recipe from...or if it was even a recipe. They'll always be a fond memory, maybe I'll remember one day but for now let's have some nutella balls instead.

Peanut butter cups (sugar free)

This month I decided to cut processed sugars out of my diet completely, I dabbled in this about 3 years ago when sugar was disagreeing with my body but now I've decided it's time for change and me to kick myself in the butt a little more. It's been 13 days and man do I miss chocolate. I actually spent the first few days making batches of chocolate pancakes which turn out more like weird blobs and large scramble, once I've made a few adjustments maybe they'll be blog worthy because they taste damn good.

Isn't everyones favourite kind of healthy food the kind that tastes like it's bad for you? and do these taste bad for you! I was obsessed with eating peanut butter bars in the summer, so obsessed I had to refrain from making them because I literally would have eaten the whole batch in one go if I didn't have prying eyes watching me retrieve one from the fridge every time I was done. Thankfully this recipe isn't full of biscuits and chocolate, its 100% processed sugar free and they taste just as good.

I'll be honest I managed to eat the first batch of these with my mum before I got round to photographing them so be warned!