A very quick post from me tonight as I want to document my favourite overnight oats/bircher recipe. I've been searching for the perfect breakfast combination for years and it was only after feeling inspired from subscribing to the Deliciously Ella app fairly recently that I mixed a few of her recipes together and rehashed them to make this. I always make a beeline for bircher muesli whenever we stay or go somewhere for breakfast but it's often REALLY sweet and made with apple juice. Don't get me wrong, I have the biggest sweet tooth, but if I start my day with something sugary then I've got no hope. Or often they're too yogurty which I don't always fancy. I'm not a full on vegan but we have been eating a lot more plant based meals of late. Anyway, this is just what I've been looking for, it takes just 5 minutes to throw together when the baby is in bed and then you have a healthy breakfast ready and waiting for you in the morning, if you scale it up then you're set for the week! Lots of you have requested the recipe too so I hope it's helpful.

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?! 

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... 

The change in season gives me so much new enthusiasm for cooking and coming up with new salads, fresh easy BBQ food and summery desserts. There's so much to celebrate food wise at this time of year too with asparagus, the first of the courgettes, Jersey Royal potatoes, summer berries and warm, al fresco evenings to enjoy it all. It's not just about the food though, I'm always on the lookout for serving dishes and platters to share it all with friends & family when entertaining - naturally I turn to The White Company. This weekend we hosted the first BBQ of the season at ours and I wanted to come up with something different to the usual burgers and sausages that we'll all no doubt do to death this summer. After a little reciple planning I created a feast and it was SO delicious - if I do say so myself. Lots of you were asking for the recipes so I've shared all the food below;  {this is part two of three in this outdoor living collaboration with The White Company}.

 

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...

Mmn, pavlova. It's a pudding that everybody loves in the summer and is a perfect get-ahead pudding that you can leave in the fridge until the last minute. Great for BBQs and the hot summery days we've been spoilt with so far. A Great British summer after all! Walker's Shortbread asked me to come up with some recipes for their meringues and I decided to go tropical for this one. You can see my mini pavlovas with berries and a rose white chocolate cream here. This recipe is dairy free {not because I'm avoiding dairy but because I love coconut and all of my friends did too} yet I don't think you miss the cream in this one bit.

I go through stages of cooking. Sometimes feeling really inspired and knocking up new exciting dinners, a spring in my step as I go. Other times I feel at a loss for inspiration and just can't seem to think past three or four regular dinners on repeat or it feels like a real chore. Not having a proper kitchen for about 6 months certainly took it's toll so since May and us having a brand new sparkly place to cook, I've felt my love for food come flooding back. It's also coincided with my favourite time of year for cooking, summery al fresco light dinners that don't take forever slaving over a stove. I feel like I'm so much healthier at this time of year too. It's been perfect timing with the allotment just coming into her prime with courgettes and kale suddenly coming out of our ears! Recipe blog posts are probably the most requested type of posts at the moment through Instagram stories where I share snippets of what I'm cooking most nights. So here's a quick post with some of our favourite things to eat right now;

Meringues make for the best summer puds. So yummy, so easy and with a few berries and a dollop of cream they can look really pretty. Walkers Shortbread have a new range of meringues out and asked me to create some new recipes for the summer. Last Sunday I was on pudding duty for a family BBQ so decided on mini pavlovas with a rose flavoured cream, white chocolate and berries. They were demolished within minutes and I've been craving that delicious rose flavour again ever since! Full recipe below. 

I cooked on Mother's Day a couple of weeks back and it felt so good to be back in a proper kitchen. We've been living with our two-hob, tiny micro-oven temporary kitchen since the first week of December and whilst it's fine for everyday quick dinner cooking, you really don't want to spend a lot of time in there or be juggling all the pots and pans. So for once I felt inspired to create something special for my lovely Mumma but also my Grandparents, Ben and my Dad. A lot of you requested the recipe after I posted photos on Instagram so you can find it below. It's a recipe I made up from a couple of different ones turned out really well, looks more impressive than the skill behind it and can all be made in advance. 

I haven't written many food posts on here, probably only this one or this. I just find writing about interiors or travel or our weekends a bit more fun, and pretty. My husband and I both LOVE food but blogging it just doesn't seem to happen very often, mostly because we're too starving to take photos of meals before wolfing them down, or they always seem to fill my camera with steam. However it's a post that's been requested by a few of you {hey Emily and Kayleigh} over the past couple of months so I thought with the changing seasons it would be a good time to actually sit down to write a bit more. Some of our favourite weekday dinners below, as well as the smoothie recipe that we have every single morning.

A few photos from last weekend when I threw a little garden party/BBQ for Ben's Birthday. It was such a gorgeous evening and we sat out until late under the festoon lights without feeling the teeniest bit chilly. England is hardly ever like that so we sure made the most of it. P.S. I know I always promise interior posts and people have requested garden/allotment which I will get round to, I'm just making my way through all the photos of late! 

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.