Fruit & Yogurt Layered Desserts - Rhubarb & Ginger, Blackberry & Coconut and Raspberry & Almond - Bakemas Day 18

I’m being completely honest here, today has been one of those days where I just can’t bring myself to get stuff done. Every time I decided what to do I was missing an ingredient and then it got really late so this post is actually something I made a couple of weeks ago and never ended up putting up.
I made an apple, yogurt & breadcrumb layered dessert about a month ago which is something we always had as kids but it gave me the idea to try different flavours and use biscuits, nuts etc.

This is kind of a “world is your jellyfish” dessert! (psst, I do know its oyster!) You can add any fruit compote with biscuits, nuts, cereal, oats, breadcrumbs, chocolate, wafers I mean you can pretty much put anything in here and layer up with yogurt. I will say that the rhubarb is by far my favourite which I wasn't expecting.

Apple, Raspberry & White Chocolate Oatmeal Crumble - Bakemas Day 9

It’s been almost 2 months since my last crumble post (do I sound like I'm at a crumbles anonymous meeting?) so I think it’s probably acceptable to put this up now and this recipe was a complete accident.
I was re-testing the crumble topping for the berry oatmeal chocolate chip crumble I posted in October so I was using apples as we had an abundance off the tree hanging around begging to be used up. As the prepared baker I am I went to the baking cupboard to find no dark chocolate, the likely hood of my mum eating the chocolate out the baking cupboard is probable to pretty high, the only thing I was left with was white chocolate or 80% dark chocolate, so white chocolate it was. The idea of having white chocolate and apples wasn’t at the top of my “to try” list so I threw in some leftover frozen raspberries from the chocolate and raspberry triple layer cake, I know, I know, that was in August, what can I say, we’re not big raspberry people, but I bunged them in and magic happened.
I really didn’t think I’d enjoy it so much, it was just a means to test out the topping. I thought it would be entirely too sweet but the unsweetened fruit and slight sharpness from the raspberries really balances out the sweetness of the white chocolate. I pretty much ate half the crumble for lunch; in my defence it was a small crumble. So now that crumble story time is over, although probably a little too in depth, are you ready to make this? It’ll take you a couple of minutes to throw together and then you can wander off and peruse the Christmas tree...or do something useful.

Spiced Shortbread Dipped in White Chocolate and Chopped Pistachios - Bakemas Day 1

I’ve been thinking about this since December 1st last year and I'm still not sure I'm entirely mentally prepared. I'm sure if you’re familiar with the internet and youtube you'll have heard of a thing called vlogmas. For any of you who have no idea what I'm talking about it’s when vloggers/people make a video everyday in December on the lead up to Christmas to document all the Christmasy things they're doing, so being the type of person who likes to set them self tasks that I'm slightly unsure I can achieve naturally I thought this was a brilliant idea. I came up with this idea last year, although I’m sure there are other food bloggers who do something similar, but spent way too long umming and ahhing over it. In that case I've technically had 12 months to prepare for this, although it’s the 1st I’m still pretty unprepared and still a tiny bit unsure this is the best idea but we’re going to roll with the punches. So I'm coining this Bakemas! 24 days, 24 recipes, potentially pictures of all the Christmas I’ve injected into my room which by the way doesn’t even have a tree in yet, I know I know it’s going up tonight, and probably a lot of Christmas stories. I’m sure I’ll spend the majority of the month stressing and having a million and one things to do but I’ve sort of grown accustomed to that feeling. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that my ability to procrastinate like a champion doesn’t mean I end up spending the entire 24 days in the kitchen and chained to my laptop because having time to watch endless amounts of Christmas films and spend a lot of time in pyjamas drinking hot chocolate is extremely important. On that note, these are the perfect accompaniment to hot chocolate or coffee (I can't vouch for tea but potentially that too) taste amazing and really easy to whip up. Happy Bakemas!

Chocolate and Raspberry Triple Layer Cake with White Chocolate Flavoured Cream and Freeze Dried Raspberries

I am pretty terrible when it comes to giving people gifts on time, I mean I have a good excuse, I like to make the presents I give people and I am the biggest procrastinator known to man. This year I’m trying to step my game up, be a little more organised, the idea of it is great but the execution not so much. My friend Sophie, also known as the majority of the hands on this blog is usually great at giving me presents, and they’re always on time and I am the crumby one so this year instead of feeling bad I actually tried to get it all done on time. I will say everything was still a little last minute, I came up with the idea of what to give her a couple of months ago and still a couple of days before I was seeing her I was making a cushion. I made the cake and some truffles the day before I saw her and I made the card and wrapped the presents a couple of hours before she arrived but it was still done before she arrived, all laid out by the TV like it was Christmas morning. What I’m trying to say is; it still counts. If only I had pictures to show you the packaging, I was giddy wrapping it, I bought brown paper bags and grey twine specifically, I even went as far as to make a box that perfectly fitted the mug to fit in another bigger box with the truffles sitting neatly in bags next to it. Okay so this blog post is not about the presents, it’s actually about the cake. This was a bit of an experiment, like I said, I went all out, three layers, something I’d never tried before a mysterious pink layer. Obviously you know from the title it’s actually raspberry flavoured not a mysterious pink layer. I did have a couple of mishaps, I tried to make dairy free white chocolate mousse without really putting much thought into it and it deflated so I had to run to tesco and buy some cream and made white chocolate cream instead. I also ran out of cream for the top and had to make a second batch and because I could only find the star nozzle, not the round one I ended up scraping the cream off and re-piping it because it looked like something from the 60s but shhh.

Triple Chocolate Chickpea Cookies (Grain Free)

Strawberries, greek yogurt and triple chocolate chip cookies is something I quite frequently eat with friends, especially in summer. I do have a favourite triple chocolate chip cookie recipe but it involves A LOT of chocolate and when you just want to make dessert you don't want to have to go out buy 1lb of chocolate and then bake. It actually only occurred to me recently that I can just make a batch freeze the dough in portions and just bake them quick when we want them, however I thought I'd go one step further, if you're going to make cookies, why not try and make them healthier.

Cranberry, white chocolate and orange Doughnut Muffins

Leftover cranberry sauce? fear no more! I feel like this idea came to me in a dream or something although I'm sure it was probably just a random thought. I'll be honest, I'm not a giant fan of cranberry sauce so although I knew people would like them I was a little apprehensive to try these but oh my! I was shocked at how tasty they were when I bit into them.