I have a MILLION blog posts to catch up on, and I'm hoping to get our trip to NYC and a post about my breastfeeding journey so far up soon, perhaps a little Christmas gift guide too. But for now I wanted to share the best apple cake recipe I've ever made. I know we're past peak apple season now but I hope to make this throughout the year - apple cake is one of my ultimate favourites and I've searched high and low for a recipe like this! The icing is heaven too.

Here's the thing about my relationship with banana bread. I hate bananas. I hate banana flavoured things like banana ice cream/sweets. Yet I LOVE banana bread. I think it started with our local coffee shop serving this incredible banana and pecan loaf that I've become addicted to - warmed up, as an occasional mid morning snack if I'm meeting a friend for coffee there. It's vegan so it doesn't feel tooo unhealthy. And to me, it just tastes like heaven, even though I don't like bananas?! And since entering this second trimester of pregnancy, now that I'm out of that savoury sausage roll, cheese or pickled onion weird craving stage, all I've wanted everyday is banana bread. Or some kind of soft, homemade cake of some kind. Before we went to California, my spending on cake at a coffee shop each morning was getting ridiculous. We then went to California and it didn't get much better, either hunting out banana peanut butter chocolate chip cake out there {amazing} or wanting a cookie of some type everyday. When I got home, I vowed to actually make my own banana bread at long last. So that's how I discovered this recipe. And I feel like it will become a weekly bake in our house, until I have the baby and realise I probably don't have a good excuse to just want cake all the time anymore. You probably make banana bread allll the time but this was my very first time in making it. I didn't even like peeling the bananas {yuk} but I did enjoy eating it afterwards. There are a million recipes online but I liked the look of this one as it was for one bowl, and didn't require any fancy ingredients.

I took this to a friend's coffee catch up last week, cutting a slice before I went just to test it - which by the way if you want to do this, you can cover it up by wrapping it in baking paper and tying it with some pretty ribbon. But I think it's time I made another, and maybe slice and put it in the freezer this time so I can quickly defrost a bit whenever I feel like it. And it has bananas in, so it's basically one of your five a day, right?! 

Are you beginning to feel festive yet? I, completely unashamedly, am! And last week I hosted an early Christmas gingerbread decorating party with three of my best friends to get us into the spirit. It was such a fun evening and a huge thank you to Hobbycraft for being the experts in all things Christmas crafting/baking.

It's that time of year again where our allotment is suddenly producing overtime. We're inundated with courgettes and kale which I have to keep coming up with recipes for. I love it, it forces me to come up with new things and use our produce straight out of the ground that we've spent time growing. I promise to get an allotment post up soon! One of my favourite summer recipes when we have a glut of beetroot is to turn them into chocolate brownies. At the weekend we were hosting a BBQ and these were perfect, and I almost prefer them to regular brownies? They're not exactly a health food with butter, a block of chocolate and sugar added but delicious, and you feel like you're getting some beetroot at least... 

Seeing as you all asked so nicely for the recipe of this lemon cake that I made for my Mum's Birthday this week I thought I'd share a few cake baking secrets before the long weekend in case you're in a baking mood... 

 

What have you been cooking recently? With the changing seasons I'm feeling more inspired to switch up some recipes and have been particularly inspired with a couple of new cookbooks. At the weekend I made this rhubarb & ginger crumble which lots of you requested the recipe for...

Ohhh Nutella Cheesecake. I mean, what's not to love?! I first had this at the start of the summer when a friend bought it to a BBQ and I've been making it ever since. It's ridiculously easy and of course ridiculously yummy. Nigella is a goddess when it comes to recipes like these and I just know that it's one of those classics in our family now that will be requested time and time again. Just ignore the fact that it uses a whole jar of Nutella and you're all good! I find you have to have this with lots of fresh strawberries to cut through the richness and make sure it's served really cold from the fridge. Yay for summer evenings.

I miss writing my weekly Friday blog posts with some favourite photos from the week just gone. With the house renovation, blogging has kind of taken a bit of a back seat right now. That being said, I have a full up camera roll on my phone so I wanted to publish these photos before they get stored deep in a hard drive or at the bottom of a Facebook album. Having them on here makes them so much easier for me to find! So, going back to the Easter weekend a few photos, it was also my Birthday on the Easter Monday so we certainly had our sugar fix with chocolate eggs, nest cakes and birthday cake! Back with a house update soon and photos from our trip to Oxford last weekend. Happy Friday, R <3 xx 

It was Ben's birthday last week and he always says that he doesn't want a fuss but I feel that you simply cannot have a Birthday without some kind of celebration {he said he wasn't even bothered by a cake!! But when people want to bring presents round you can't not offer them some cake}. So we kept it low key, I baked a cake and we had some family round on the Monday followed by an evening in London on his actual Birthday for just the two of us. I feel that the Sky Garden deserves a post of it's own accord so that will be to follow.

Oops I've been rubbish on the blog front this week, it's Wednesday already and this is my first post. Time flies when you're having fun. Apologies, anyway here's a recipe for a cake I made last week to try and use some of our courgette glut up from our allotment.  Don't turn your nose up at courgettes associated with a cake, it's like carrot cake - you can't taste it at all, it just melts down and makes the cake extra moist without having to use a load of butter or oil. Technically it's not that healthy, it just feels it having a whole vegetable in haha. It was actually one of the best chocolate cakes I've made and I then added some icing which made it even better. Best of all it took about ten minutes to get it into the oven, some cakes seem to take so long to prepare that I start losing the will! Oh and also good timing for the Bake Off starting again tonight, who will be watching?!! 

It was my Grandma's Birthday last week so I hosted a little evening tea party for her and the rest of my family. My Mum doesn't have a kitchen at the moment and I always like an excuse to host a gathering anyway. I baked a Victoria Sponge and some chocolate berry brownies and decorated everything with fresh roses. When I arranged it, it has been so hot for so long that I thought we could all sit in the garden but it was a grey rainy day instead so it was Plan B inside with the doors open! Some more photos and the recipe for the cake below... 

Healthy recipes coming soon I promise but first I must post this three tiered lemon cake that I made for my Mumma's birthday at the weekend. Perfect for this lovely Spring weather. It's filled with lemon curd and topped with lemon icing, my Mum's favourite. So easy to make too, you can always rely on a Delia recipe. Just don't be silly like me and say that you'll make two of these cakes at once {Ben's grandma's birthday is the same day}, your hand will ache from grating so many lemons, and you'll probably run out of ingredients half way through and have to drive to Spar in your apron... 

Forced rhubarb is my favourite type of rhubarb. By growing it in the dark {or under a rhubarb forcer in the garden}, you get sweeter tasting, bright pink coloured rhubarb. We have an abundance of the regular stuff at our allotment right now and it's good for baking {it's a lot sharper so needs a lot more sugar} but this forced pink stuff is the creme de la creme for baking with. I've blogged about rhubarb once before but I found a new Waitrose recipe to try out {which has been requested by a few of you on Instagram} which I made last weekend and can't stop thinking about ever since. A firm new favourite for us I think, whether it's for elevenses at the weekend, afternoon tea or used for a pudding, warm with ice cream, you have to try this cake. Super easy too and it turned out exactly like the picture. Exactly, not often that happens with a recipe so kudos to Waitrose.

Happy Easter! Spring has sprung and from tomorrow you have a four day weekend to eat as much chocolate as you like, what's not to love?! These are some photos of this year's decorations and last year's long Easter weekend with some baking inspiration - I love making new traditions and for the past few years I've made this chocolate nest cake every year as well as the old favourite of hot cross buns on Good Friday with family. This is the first time for my Easter tree in the kitchen though, I think that will become a regular thing too... 

If you saw these cookies you'd think that they look like normal cookie dough right? They're actually made from chickpeas and have no flour, oil or refined sugar! And as a bonus they're loaded with folic acid, fibre, iron, zinc, copper, maganese and protein compared to your standard white flour/butter/sugar cookies. They're soft and gooey too, my favourite type of cookies. And crucially they're ridiculously easy to make and you can't taste the chickpeas. Guilt free! 

Yum, it's rhubarb season! One of my favourites. I love the it's pinky green hue and how delicious it is with vanilla. We're hoping that we'll have a big supply from our allotment this year but Ben's mum always has an abundance to give away with leaves bigger than our heads. What are your best ways to use it? Here are a few of mine..