Simply Great Food                           ...by design 

I made these last week for a vegan workmate - a bit of an experiment (again). I made the fondant flowers first and left them to dry out overnight. I made the cake with applesauce (instead of eggs - go figure!) and the icing was the Aquafaba icing that I've posted about before. I have to say that they tasted lovely, but they didn't hold up as well as traditional butter icing - I need to work on that technique a bit more #cooking #food #photography #somethingsweet

So, last week I posted a photo of my version of a Protein rich pancake. but after reading up on it last week, I realised that I could make some amazing, tasty adjustments and hey viola - utterly delicious! Recipe for Protein Pancakes Mk 2 Serves 2 3 organic or free-range eggs 1/4 cup full-fat Greek Yogurt 1/4 cup water 1 tsp vanilla essence (not flavour!) 1 tbsp chia seeds 1/4 cup almond flour 2 tsp melted butter Mixed Berries & Pomegranate seeds 2 tbsp toasted flaked almonds

I love pancakes. Growing up in Canada sort of made that de rigueur. Back in the '60's my Mom was quite ahead of her time as our pancakes were made from scratch (and not Aunt Jemima's mix - though, in truth, there's not a lot wrong with Aunt Jemima's!!) with buckwheat (instead of regular wheat), oil (instead of butter - of course, we now know that butter is best), the milk was skimmed, and of course, nothing substituted real Grade A Maple Syrup (and nothing ever should!). I

I love Tiramisu - it quite simply covers all the bases. It is easy enough to put together and serve at a casual lunch or you can take it up a notch and get a bit heavy-handed with the liqueur with fresh fruit and deliver a very special occasion dish - we have had it on Christmas as an alternative to the traditional pudding and at one very special Christmas, where we had 14 around the table, I made them in 250ml Mason jars (so pretty and so much easier to serve when its done

A while ago I experimented with the "Cupcakes in a jar" craze that was around for a while. I had brought back some very pretty 250ml Mason jars that I had bought for pretty cheap in Canadian Tire and baked chocolate cupcakes in the jar, topped with a very nice "ombre" pink & white icing, labelled and decorated the jars - I think they looked amazing and thought they might work for weddings or girly parties .... Recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes 4 eggs 200g caster sugar 200g butte

I am very curious about all things culinary and am really impressed when I read about how incredibly inventive vegan cooks can be (without resorting to using the omnipresent soya inventions simulated to mimic dairy or meat products). When looking into creating a vegan birthday cake, I was sucked into the fascinating way in which chick pea water (aquafaba) can be used instead of egg whites - it really can make an amazing Italian Meringue icing. Recipe for Vegan Chocolate Cake

I love making and decorating cupcakes, in fact, it was a nice little earner back in the day when I had a small catering business and I supplied local businesses, festival cafes, corporate events and private individuals with cakes, muffins & cupcakes. In fact, Lyndsey (from Cakes by Lyndsey) and I had a wonderful time hosting Cupcake decorating classes for hen parties, team building events and the like - it was a combination of extreme stress and serious hard work, culminating