Spelt and tahini cookies, sugar-free

Seemingly overnight Spring has brought with it many wonderful things: shiny, new leaves on the trees; showers of cherry blossoms; the first warm rays of sunshine and also, happily, it has also returned to me my love of cooking. Motherhood dimmed my passion for the act of cooking somewhat in the first few months as I focussed exclusively on the butter bean (who's not so little these days). Yet here I am, joyfully spending an entire weekend by the stove. Over the past few days I have baked sourdough bread, made aubergine curry, an Alfafa sprout salad and these spelt cookies, twice. They were good the first time but I felt like I could improve the recipe by subtracting half the butter. Yes, you read it correctly the recipe has been improved by adding less butter.

150g spelt flour

4 tablespoons tahini 

100ml runny honey 

2 tablespoons ground almonds

1 tablespoon soft butter 

1 tablespoon raw cacao nibs

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

1 egg

Topping: either Eridanous Sesame Paste (you can buy this at Lidl) with honey or 2 tablespoons tahini and 1 tablespoon set honey and 1 tablespoon soft cheese like mascapone or Philadelphia

Pistachios/pecans/almonds

Melt the butter in a large pan. Once it has melted add the tahini. Stir for 1min on a low heat then turn the heat off. Stir in the flour, followed by all the other dry ingredients. Finally, add the egg. Mix it well to a paste the consistency of peanut butter. Pull off bits of the dough and roll it into a ball about the size of a golf ball. Flatten the top and lay them all out of a greased baking tray or on a baking tray covered in baking paper. Bake for 12min at 180 degrees C.

Matcha and marshmallow cake: an alternative Christmas cake

Otherwise known as the "Waiting Cake". I am more than 1 week overdue now and even though I know my baby will make an appearance soon I am feeling under pressure to start already. I like my hospital (Whittington) and all the staff I've met are lovely, yet I can't help noticing that everyone is very keen to get this baby out as soon as possible. Why? Surely, the baby should come when it's ready and not when everyone else is ready. Sometimes, it feels like our culture/society has got it's priorities wrong. I watched "Birth Story" recently and it's made me feel very hippy about the whole process (or perhaps it's just reinforced my natural hippiness). I've managed to put off my sweep until Monday, so that gives our little girl the weekend to get going. In the meantime, I am trying to relax so that I'm not hindering her with anxiety or fear. Breathe, meditate, eat. Of course, this is the problem - when you feel rushed, you aren't naturally relaxed. There is something inherently relaxing about baking though, especially when you go freestyle. This cake turned out quite Christmassy with it's soft green sponge and snowy white logs. It would work very well in cupcake form too.

Recipe

100g butter

50g coconut oil

150g plain flour

150g icing sugar

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 heaped tablespoon matcha powder

1 tablespoon plain yoghurt/ soured cream

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Icing

100g mascapone

50g icing sugar

1 teapsoon matcha powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Marshmallows to decorate

I used my favourite method of baking, which is to melt the butter and coconut oil first in a pan, then combine it with the sugar and then slowly to soft the flour in while mixing all the time. About half way through adding the flour, crack the eggs in and carry on with the rest of the flour and cream of tartar. Finally, stir in the match powder, vanilla and yoghurt. I put in some marshmallows at this point too, but they just melted into the cake rather than create chewy bits, so I don't think there's much point in doing that. Bake in a small loaf tin that's been greased with coconut oil or butter. You can of course replace the coconut oil with more butter if you don't have any - I like to make my cakes a little bit healthier by using some coconut oil. Of course, matcha is crazy good for you too. It takes 30min on 180 degrees C. Allow it to cool before icing and decorating.

Cardamon flan aka A happy accident

From avoiding sugar (with varying degrees of success) to full blown sugarholic. This is my journey. While everyone is on a healthy eating tip these days, with Helmsley&Helmsley and Deliciously Ella,  I appear to have gone the other way entirely in the last couple of months, whilst experimenting with cake and dessert recipes. Writing a cookbook and being  pregnant has given me the perfect reason (excuse?) to fall off the sugar-free wagon and on to a soft cloud of cream cakes and delicate meringue; bouncy doughnuts (I made these twice in the last fortnight) and an unexpected cardamon flan. The flan was a cream-cake-gone-wrong, a very happy accident indeed. Just like my pregnancy come to think of it. It was a taste I'd had before, somewhere in Spain - was it Andalucia or Barcelcona? I can't put my finger on it.  I've visited both numerous times and I wish I'd recorded more of the meals I'd eaten there, because they were some of the best I've ever had. So in summary, a flan similar to this was once eaten by yours truly sometime in the past in Spain. It was not cardamon though, and this ancient, aromatic spice is what makes my flan really special.

Can you see how soft and squigy it is inside? This is because it's based on a cardamon custard: heat 400ml of the milk, cream and cardamon pods slowly in a saucepan. Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together. Blend the cornflour with the remaining 100ml of milk and add to the eggs and carry on whisking. When the milk has come to the boil, take it off the heat for about 10min. Remove the pods and heat once again. Stir continuously until this mixture thickens, then place the pan in a sink of cold water to cool. Stir occasionally. Once the mixture is completely cold blend it with an electric blender or whisk while adding the butter and flour. Bake at 180 degrees C for about 50min.

Ingredients

500ml milk 

50ml single cream 

5 cardamon pods 

3 tablespoons cornflour 

4 egg yolks 

100g light cane sugar 

200ml butter 

150g flour

Rhubarb cake with meringue topping

I'm a big believer in openness. So much so that sometimes I worry that I overshare on this blog and try to tone down my natural tendencies. Yet I have been given some feedback recently from a few different people and apparently you, the reader, likes to get personal. Don't worry, I won't hit you with a bomb of over-personal information right away (or perhaps you'd enjoy that) but I can commit to slowly opening up once more, perhaps a bit more like I used to when I first started this blog. When I examine my approach, there was no conscious change, yet I think that with time I started holding back a little bit with the fear of being seen as an emotional car crash. I love receiving feedback because it alters my perspective. It gives me a chance to let go of any fears I have and grow more into  myself, even if sometimes that might be slightly dramatic or over-emotional. I am Slavic after all. And talking of those Slavic roots, here we have a cake based on my gran's old recipe, only with seasonal rhubarb...

There were a couple of mishaps while making this: firstly, I misunderstand my mum when she was reading the recipe aloud and put too much butter in the dough, so it was too soft. Secondly, my mum put it on too a high a temperature in the oven. No matter. It was delicious nevertheless. Here however I give you the correct quantities and temperature, so that yours will be even better still.

Ingredients 

500g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 egg yolks

350g of  caster sugar
2 tablespoons sour cream

800g rhubarb

150g raisins

1 teaspoon vanilla essence 

4 egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks

- Make dough out of the flour, baking powder, 125g of sugar, sour cream and egg yolks

- Take a handful of dough and put in the freezer

- Put the remainder of the dough in a plastic bag in the fridge

- Peel the rhubarb, cut into chunks

- Mix the rhubarb with the raisins and 100g of sugar
- Butter a baking tray and roll the dough out to fit the bottom
- Place this in a pre-heated oven for 10min at 180 degrees C
- Add the rhubarb mix and put it back in the oven for another 10min
- Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.
- Add vanilla essence and the remaining sugar tot he whites and keep blitzing until the mixture thickens
- Pour this over the top of the rhubarb.
- take the small dough ball out of the freezer and grate over the top
- Bake int he oven altogether for a further 35min at a reduced heat (about 160 degrees C)

Sesame flapjacks (no sugar)

My apologies. My aim is to blog at least once a week, a commitment I've been neglecting of late. I am in a period of restructure. I am restructuring my timetable, my habits, my priorities, my social life and my mind. That's basically my whole life come to think of it. I have 5 months to hand in the manuscript of my book. This sounds like a long time but I know it isn't, because I've been writing my book. For 5 years. Yes, granted - that wasn't full time - but still, there's no room for complacency. This is my dream project, and I don't think I have ever cared about something work-related this much before. That's not to say that I haven't cared, only that this is very, very important, you get me? Everything else will need to stay on the backburner for the time being. Happily, cooking is a big part of my dream project. Also, I have to eat and keep my energy levels up. Flapjacks are always good at times like these.

This is because oats release energy slowly, as do sesame seeds. As usual, I avoided sugar and used good quality honey instead. I also substituted some of the butter for coconut oil. It made them more crumbly, but this was not a problem for me.

Ingredients 

100g oats

100g sesame seeds

150g butter

200ml honey

50g coconut oil

50g almonds

Melt the butter and oil in a pan. Add the sesame seeds and fry until golden. Add the honey and the almonds. And anything else you fancy really. Pour the mixture into a greased baking tray and bake for 25min at about 180 degrees C.

Sugar-free chocolate-coconut truffles and the power of gratitude

In 2015 instead of New Year's Resolutions, I decided to have a monthly focus that helps me bring new habits into my life. The April focus is gratitude. Gratitude seems a bit meaningless. Everyone knows they should be grateful for what they've got, because there are people out there that have a lot less... blah blah blah. If we are grateful only when comparing ourselves to others then I think we're missing the point, because every person is on a different journey. I'll explain why I'm finding gratitude to be a truly transformative force in my life. When you are grateful for something and you make time each day to have this realization, then you simply can't abuse, mistreat or even take for granted what you are grateful for. For example, if I'm grateful for my body, then it follows that I treat it well. Gratitude almost immediately alters your mindset, you see. All of a sudden not eating processed sugar isn't a struggle, but something that I want to do. So with that in mind, here are some sugar-free, gracious chocolate truffles I made.

You simply blitz all the ingredients in a blender, then roll the resulting mush into balls. Roll them around in more cacao powder to finish and press the nut of your choice into the top. These ingredients worked very well but you can of course mix them up with whatever you have available. I have many things to be grateful for right now, but even before all this incredible luck came my way, I had plenty - we all do. I am even making a point right now of being grateful for things that haven't happened yet but I would like to happen, in advance, to encourage them into existence.

Ingredients (6 big truffles)

75g good quality, pitted dates

50g brazil nuts

2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons coconut oil

3 tablespoons organic cacao powder and a bit more for rolling

Almonds and walnuts to go on top

Courgette and matcha cake

You know how I like to celebrate the small stuff. Just handing in a good piece of work is cause for celebration in my eyes. You can't control the outcome of any situation but you can commit to it and do your best. When you feel like you've done that why not celebrate in some small way, like opening a bottle of prosecco or baking a cake? Or both. This courgette-matcha cake was inspired by the one in Nigella's book but I changed so much about the recipe that I can't say it's the same cake anymore. Hers didn't have matcha in it for a start. I love adding matcha powder to sweets, it automatically makes everything taste Japanese.

As you can see, I don't like to skimp on the icing. I also added nutmeg, which works with the flavour of courgettes; and I added butter, because, come on, a cake needs butter! Then of course I used my special method of cooking the cake, where I melt the butter on the hob, add sugar, freshly grated nutmeg, then courgettes, and eventually beat the flour and eggs in. You turn the hob off once the butter and sugar have melted together, so you're not actually cooking the cake but it feels like you are. Finally, you add 2 teaspoons match powder, the baking soda and cream of tartar. Then you put it in a greased tin and bake for half an hour at 180 degrees C. Once it's cooled you cover it with your pistachio green icing - icing sugar and Philadelphia blended together with a teaspoon of matcha powder and the juice of half a lime. For main course we ate venison steaks in fig sauce. I just made the recipe up but it was divine, so I will share it with you in the coming future. Venison feels like an extremely extravagant thing to eat for lunch, but I will need to make them during the day, so I can take a decent photo for you. How I suffer for my art.

Ingredients 

150g butter

100g raw cane sugar

150g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

2 courgettes, grated

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

3 teaspoons matcha powder

250gr Philadelphia cream cheese

Half a lime

75g icing sugar

Sugar and gluten free yet delicious: lime tarts

"I've never used an avocado like this before". That's what I was thinking last night, when making the filling for these tarts. They've been pinned on my Pinterest Food board for months, because I love the way they look, yet the avocado filling stopped me from proceeding. The original recipe calls for just avocado, lime, honey and stevia. I changed this to avocado, lime, mascapone, vanilla and agave. So they're not dairy-free anymore, but all the more delicious for it. 

The original crust has also been altered. There's no shredded coconut (the coconut flavour comes from the coconut oil only so it's very subtle),  but there are pecans and ground almonds as well as walnuts. The combination of these nuts with the dates is a happy one. It gave me an idea for a sugar-free, chocolate truffle. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, this is how you make these: blitz all the base ingredients in the food processor, then put them all in a bowl and squish them all together with your hands. Grease a muffin tin with coconut oil and press the base into each bit. Blitz the filling ingredients and put the resulting, creamy filling on top. Finish off with a piece of kiwi and pop into the freezer for 1 hour, then you can keep these in the fridge.

Ingredients (makes 10)

Base

200g dates

50g pecans

50g walnuts

50g ground almonds

1 tablespoon coconut oil 

Filling

1 1/2 avocados 

100g mascapone

1 teaspoon good quality vanilla essence

Juice of 2 limes

Zest of 1 unwaxed lime
5 tablespoons agave nectar

Polish carnival cakes: fat faworki

OK, so they're not really called "fat faworki", just "faworki", but mine turned out a little on the fat side and "fat faworki" has a certain ring to it, you have to admit. Crispy, soft and flaky all at once, they were rather delicious and did a very good job of impressing all the right people, so I can't complain. And yet... my faworki are still a way off from my gran's paper thin, melt-in-your-mouth ones. Nothing beats the taste of childhood.

These are traditionally eaten at carnival time, which is now, so it really is the ideal time to make them. They are very simple, as you can see. You sieve the flour into a bowl and add the other dough ingredients - crème fraîche, egg yolks, butter and icing sugar. I added moisture with the lemon vodka, just because that was on hand, but you could use a another spirit, or even vinegar or lemon juice. Kneed the dough for a couple of minutes, then roll it out on a lightly floured surface, as thin as you can get it. Cut the dough in rectangular shapes, about 9cm in length and 4cm in width, and put a slit in the middle of about 3cm. Now weave one end through the slit, in order to achieve the desired shape, like mine up there. We deep fry these in the rapeseed oil, about 30sec each side, or until golden. Make sure the oil is super hot - it should start sizzling as soon as the dough hits it. Sprinkle with icing sugar while still warm.

Ingredients

250g plain flour
50g salted butter
3 tablespoons crème fraîche
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon icing sugar and more to serve
2 tablespoons strong spirit, like vodka 
500ml rapeseed oil for frying

Super easy Polish poppy seed cake

John Lennon was right when he wrote that "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". At this point I ask myself if any plan is worth making. Perhaps life has nothing to do with plans after all, perhaps the only reason we plan is to create an illusion of control? What control do we truly have? How to be, how to think... Even this I have to question. I may choose to be strong, and think positive thoughts in the face of adversity, yet if other feelings creep in, what can I do? Either fight them, pretend I feel differently or, according to teachers like David Hawkins and Eckhart Tolle I can accept them in the knowledge that they too will pass. Whilst doing that, however, I may not be being particularly strong or positive, thereby breaking my resolution, and letting go of any control I have over the situation. However disagreeable and unpleasant that sounds, deep down I know that the path of acceptance is the one for me and that my trust in life is what keeps me sane. Sometimes. From my musings you may have figured out that the Christmas period has been taxing over here... Yet within this unavoidable brutality of life, there are still moments of comfort and softeness and it's with the wish of more of these, in all of our lives, that I give you this Polish poppy seed cake. Poppy seeds are generally known to have a calming, soothing effect on the mind and body...

A "proper" Polish poppy seed cake is an endevour, but this is a super easy version. If you go to a shop and buy the pre-prepared poppy seed mixture in a tin - called " masa makowa" - then all you need to do is add three egg yolks and 3 beaten-until-stiff egg whites, empty the lot into a greased baking tray and bake in a pre-heated oven at about 180 degrees C for 40 minutes. If you can't find this mixture, or would rather undertake the longer journey for the pure joy of it (it is quite joyous in a Slavic-Christmas kind of way), then you need to get all those ingredients down there. Soak the poppy seeds overnight in boiling water. Blend them on a very high setting until they produce a white-ish juice, then start adding all the other ingredients apart from the egg whites, keep blending. Finally, stir the egg whites into the mixture and bake as before. To finish, once the cake has cooled down, we make icing out of icing sugar and fresh lemon juice and pour it over the cake

Ingredients

1/2kg poppy seeds

1 tablespoon honey

200g caster sugar

1 tablespoon butter

100g raisins

100g dessicated coconut

100g chopped walnuts

50g candied orange peel

2 eggs, separated, whites beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon almond essence

Icing sugar

Fresh lemon juice

Honey and almond yoghurt cake with orange icing (no sugar)

I told you about the cake I baked for my boyfriend's and his mum's birthday, which ended up having a big hole in the middle... so the problem was that I had so little time on that day that I tried to do everything too quickly, including taking the cake out of it's mould. The heavier, still wet bit in the middle therefore stayed put. Sad times. Alas, today I made the cake again. Actually, I made it yesterday, and learning from the my previous mistake, I left it to cool overnight, then today I finished it off with the icing and the eating, while musing happily over the deeper life lesson learnt here. Which is "don't rush", if you're interested. Simple

You can probably detect the Middle-Eastern influence in this recipe - I replaced sugar with local honey, as they sometimes do in baklava, and the yoghurt is a little trick that my Greek friend Karina taught me, to keep the cake moist. The addition of ground almonds and orange blossom water completes the picture. A flying (or at least hovering) carpet to eat it on would be the ideal cherry-on-top, but clearly we're not quite there yet in terms of technology (seriously?)

Ingredients

Cake 
250g unsalted butter
100g ground almonds
200g plain flour
150g good quality honey
2 eggs
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
150g greek yoghurt

Icing
250g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon orange blossom water

I used my special method of cake-making whereby I melted the butter in a pan first, then added the honey and then the ground almonds. Once everything was gloopy, I turned the heat off and started to sift the flour in. Then an egg, then more flour, another egg, more flour... mixing all the time. Finally, I added the orange blossom water and honey and poured the whole lot into a greased baking tray and popped it into a pre-heated over for about 30min, 180 degrees C.

Note: This cake tastes great refridgerated

White chia seed and banana cake, a strange method

I love cooking, as you know, but not having any scales, combined with a preference for healthy, savoury food has meant that I rarely bake. People tell me that baking is therapeutic, I find it powdery and messy. Until recently. You see I've found a strange method of baking that is most pleasing to my senses. It's physical, soft and aromatic. Every time I bake in this way, I find it such an enjoyable experience that a few days later, I bake again, trying the method out with different ingredients. I love the way it feels to do something differently to how you've always done it. For example, what's also occurred to me lately is that I can run around the park in the opposite direction... for the 12 years I have been running around Victoria Park, I've never thought to change direction - now everything is new! Small changes in behaviour and habit can have an enormous impact on the psyche. This is the lesson I now need to apply to the rest of my life: make small, important changes

 

So here is my strange baking method: Instead of putting all the dry ingredients in a bowl first, I melt the butter, then add the sugar and the chia seeds. I take the pan off the heat, sieve in half the flour, slowly, stirring; add the egg yolks. I stir more. I add the mashed banana, then the other half of the flour. Stirring all the time. Finally, the egg whites. At this point, I use the whisk to beat it all together and create the desired fluffiness, before pouring into a greased baking tray. Bake as you would with any other cake, in a pre-heated oven at around 180 for about 45min. Serve with a dollop of bio-yoghurt and some organic honey. Chia seeds, by the way, are one of the healthiest foods around, high in Omega 3, fibre and protein. 

Ingredients

3 bananas, mashed
100g white chia seeds
125g raw cane sugar
2 eggs (whites beaten)
125g butter
125g plain flour
Yoghurt and honey to serve

Rummy coconut cake with a cream-cheese lime icing

Although I'm not a massive baker and probably never will be for the simple reason that I prefer savoury food, now and again baking can be really fun. Especially making up your unusual flavour combinations, I love that. Today, I was in a Caribbean mood so the cake was coconut with lime icing washed down with ginger beer cocktails. I will tell you all about the cocktails next time. Today is about the seriously boozy cake I made for my friend Anja's birthday. It's a semi-healthy one, having replaced normal sugar with coconut sugar. I was going to replace the butter with coconut oil, but in the end I got a bit nervous about that and settled on the normal stuff in the mixture, greasing the tin with coconut oil

 

First, pour the rum over the dessicated coconut to soften it. Melt the butter in a pan on a low heat, then add the sugar and turn the heat off. Beat the two together until they reach a creamy consistency. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, then start cracking the eggs in. Between each egg add a tablespoon of flour and keep blending. Add the rest of the flour, keep stirring until you get a smooth paste at which point add the rum-soaked coconut. Bake this in a pre-heated over for 45min, on about 180C. Time for the icing: blend the cream cheese, icing sugar, lime juice and remaining vanilla essence until it has the right consistency - I'm sure you know what I mean by that. Once the cake has cooled, ice it and grate some lime zest over the top. It's pretty damn good, especially with the Caribbean-style cocktails I'll blog about in a couple of days. As I don't own a set of scales, the measurements down there are all approximates

250g plain flour, sifted
250g slightly salted butter
4 eggs
250g coconut sugar
200g dessicated coconut
100ml of spiced rum
2 teaspoons of good quality vanilla essence 
200g cream cheese
Juice of 1 lime
100g icing sugar
lime rind to decorate

Malty flapjacks with black and white sesame seeds

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I have deserted my old favourite, the humble flapjack, for more exciting pastures. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth  - I make sugar-free flapjacks at least once a fortnight and have become quite the expert. And as a flapjack expert let me tell you, that these ones are really, really good

I buy the sesame seeds at the Japan Centre whenever I'm in central London, and add them to all sorts of dishes, both sweet and savoury. The crushed, black ones are especially tasty added to porridge and carrots. The malt barley extract is a sweet, gooey substance that tastes like Horlix, if you've ever had the pleasure of tasting that, and has the added bonus of being healthy. Just in case you're not sure how to make flapjacks, let me outline it for you: melt the butter in a pan and add the honey and malt barley, once it's all melted add the dry ingredients and mix well. Transfer the contents of the pan to a buttered baking tin and bake in a pre-heated over at 180 degrees Celsius for about 25min. Score while still warm, then wait until cool before troughing greedily


Ingredients

3 cups oats
1/2 cup black sesame seeds, crushed
1/2 cup white sesame seeds, not crushed
200g butter
1 cup malt barley extract
1/2 cup good quality honey

Honey and Ginger biscuits and the most enjoyable baking experience ever

I've never been massively into baking, but now I've understood why some people find it therapeutic and enjoyable. Yesterday, I had one of the most pleasurable baking experiences in my whole life while making these honey and ginger biscuits. There was something about the warm dough that made the whole experience... sensual, for want of a better word. No pummeling something as hard as a brick, no stickiness and mess (the bakers out there will know what I'm talking about), just perfect, warm dough that comes together easily and is a pleasure to work with. A child could make these biscuits, and if I ever have a child, she definitely will be making them. I say "she" not because I'm being sexist, but because for some reason I'm convinced that one day I will have a little girl

Ingredients (makes about 50)

250g butter

250g caster sugar

200g good honey

250g plain flour

1 nutmeg seed

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1 tablespoon baking soda 

 Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Melt the butter on a low heat, add the sugar and honey and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Grate the nutmeg into this and heat for a couple of minutes longer, then take off the heat, and allow to cool slightly. Sieve the flour, baking soda and ground ginger into a bowl and mix together. Now, add this to the pan and blend until you get a soft, warm dough. Now is the fun bit - enjoy. When the dough appears smooth take little bits of it and form into balls, placing each one onto a tray with greased baking paper on it. Flatten each one down and leave plenty of space between them. I fit 7-8 on one tray. Bake in the middle of the oven for 10min. Allow to stand for a few minutes before placing on a rack or plate to cool properly. We ate these washed down with warm, spicy mulled wine

Scandinavian cinnamon rolls and creamy mulled beer

The Cinnamon rolls were meant to be easy. Just a bit of dough, rolled up with some butter and cinnamon inside, only a few ingredients. Well, let me tell you the life lesson I learnt today: don't expect things to be easy. Apparently, the Dalei Lama himself says this quite a lot, and it's become my mantra of late. If life was nice and easy the whole time, then none of us would ever evolve. And yet, and yet... sometimes I do wish things were just a bit easier - those cinnamon rolls took a lot out of me. I was making them for a Secret Santa party and by the time I got there I was worn out from pummeling that bloody dough. Also, I stupidly added an extra egg when I should have just added some water to soften to dough, so here I will give you the correct amounts, that make the perfect cinnamon roll. If, like me, you find the dough too dry just add some milk or water, not another egg, which makes the rolls slightly harder than they should be once cooked. As the ingredients are simple and the recipe straight-forward, I used really good quality stuff, which made my cinnamon rolls tasty regardless - this is my trick when making something for the first time, don't skimp on the quality and you will always come out on top, even if your hands may be cramped and your wrists aching

Ingredients

700g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking ammonia

225g sugar

200g cold butter

2 eggs

50g softened butter

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Splash of water or milk

Sieve the flour, baker's ammonia and baking powder into a bowl, and mix together. Add 150g of the sugar. The rest of the sugar you mix with the cinnamon in a separate bowl. Cut the cold butter into small cubes and blend into the mixture with your fingertips, until it resembles fine breadcrumbs, then make a well in the middle. Break the eggs into the well, mix it together and make the dough, which should be stiff but not dry. If it is dry (like mine was), then add some milk or water until everything sticks together as it should. Knead the dough for a looong time. Perhaps if you have warmer hands than me, this will be easier for you. Finally, wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for about 20min. Roll it out into a rectangle on a dry surface with some flour and trim the edges, so that it's a neat one. Spread the soft butter over the top and sprinkle the cinnamon mix over the top of that. Now roll it up into a log and cut into pieces about 1cm thick. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for about 25min on 180 degrees C

We spent Christmas with my cousin in his family in Zakopane in Poland. We spent the days skiing and snowboarding, stopping of for mulled wines and beers, and grilled "Oscypek" with cranberry sauce. The "Oscypek" is a decorative, smoked cheese, typical of this area



The warm, earthy and spicey beers were my favourite, yet I also missed my dad's own recipe, which I begged him to make as soon as we arrived back in Warsaw. I can't get enough of this now, so I will share it with you while you've still got that Christmas feeling, yet are probably getting to the stage of being ever-so-slightly bored of all the stuff you've been eating and drinking for the past week. Separate the egg yolks and whites. Beat the whites with a pinch of salt until they form peeks. Better yet, get someone else to do this, while you blend the yolks with the sugar. Once the yolk mixture is reasonably smooth, add the honey. Now, gently heat the beer with the cinnamon and cloves, stirring all the time. Blend the yolks with the whites and start to slowly pour the mixture into the warming beer. Again, four hands are better than two for this, as you need to stir constantly. Whatever you do, do not let the mixture boil, or you will end up with sweet scrambled eggs in your beer. No one needs that. Once all the eggs are in the beer, stir for a couple of minutes or so while heating. Add the vanilla essence and stir some more. Try it to check the temperature. Once it's very warm - but nowhere near boiling - cover the pan and leave for a few more minutes to infuse, before serving in front of the fire. You're welcome. The measurement below serve four

Ingredients

4 beers

3 eggs

Pinch salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon vanilla essence



Bake yourself a man - A German sweet bread recipe

Last weekend my friend, Astrid, held her annual Christmas baking session. We made many varieties of cookie while drinking Prosecco and mulled wine, including all these ones, but today I want to tell you about beautiful Miriam's little men. This is yet another German Christmas tradition, and this particular recipe has been passed down through friendships and generations. As both myself and Miriam are fresh out of relationships the dough making was kind of like therapy. At one point I even found myself shaking my dough and telling it to grow up. And within 45min, it did!

First, you break up the fresh yeast in the lukewarm milk. Apparently, finding fresh yeast is not easy in the UK, our one came from Planet Organic. You combine the flour with the sugar and salt, and break the softened butter into this, working it into the mixture with your fingers. Once that's completely combined, start adding the milk (with the yeast thoroughly stirred in), and creating the dough. You need to really work it at this stage. Even when the dough is ready, the work continues for at least another ten minutes: "Beat it up" I was told, while it's creator went out for a cigarette. Finally, you cover the dough with a wet towel and place somewhere warm, to grow. After about 45min-1hour, separate it into equal chunks and make whatever takes your fancy. Traditionally it's men, but we also made women, snowmen, stars and children, the rest we plaited. If you are sticking to the traditional concept, make the head first and the body needs to be made out of just one chunk. Then stick the head on and bake for about 45min on a medium heat. The result is something like fresh, melt-in-your-mouth brioche, delicious with the lychee tea we drank at Astrid's house, and coffee the next morning, at my house. Next time, I may try adding the almonds too, though I think I'll leave the raisins out as they are prone to burning and shrivelling. No one needs that

Ingredients

1kg flour
40gr fresh yeast
125g sugar
1 tblsp salt
500ml lukewarm milk
100gr butter
(150g almonds or raisins, optional)

Polish "Baba" - Easter Cake

I think I may have the best family in the world. OK, so my parents used to forget to pick me up from school, argue constantly and have some consistency issues, but they sure are making up for it now that we are all grown up. On Sunday, they drove up from Eastbourne in order to help me sort me garden out, knowing that I would be incapable of doing this myself or even considering doing it at all. Mum brought this beautiful "Baba", which is a typical cake for Easter. We're going away on holiday this year, but I guess she couldn't quite forgo making it

Even though this is one cake that must be on every table in Poland at Easter time, it's an extra special version, because even though you can have many delicious flavours of "Baba", this one has three distinct sides to it. It's sweet but not sickly, both lemony and chocolaty, with poppy seeds providing an interesting texture and nuttiness. Each mouthful is different, therefore this is the perfect cake for people who want to both have their cake and eat it

Ingredients

300g plain flour

250g butter

8 Tblsp Olive oil

5 eggs

250g icing sugar

1 tsp light vinegar

2 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp cocoa

1/2 cup poppy seeds

2 tsp vanilla essence

Juice of 2 lemons

Mix the softened butter with the egg yolks and icing sugar. Once this is smooth, start adding the flour (which has been previously mixed with the baking powder), followed by the vinegar, oil and vanilla essence, mixing all the time. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add them too. Now, split this mixture into three - into one add the cocoa, into the other two the poppy seeds and juice of 1 lemon respectively. Take the "Baba" mould and butter it. First pour in the lemon mixture, then the chocolate, and finally the poppy mixture. Bake for 40min at 180 degrees C. Make the icing by mixing some icing sugar with the juice of 1 lemon and ice whilst the cake is still warm. Cool and enjoy with family and friends

Seedy flapjacks and the art of patience

I was starting to worry that I'd lost my knack with flapjacks...

But it turns out that I really haven't. You just shouldn't eat them as soon as they're out of the oven, because they need time to set. I ate three in this warm, crumbly state, fretting continuously about how I'd accidently made granola, about what went wrong, that perhaps I hadn't used enough butter... Actually, the only thing that was missing was a little bit of patience

I feel like life's been asking that of me a lot recently. It's a lesson I appear to be quite resistant to. I have moments where I completely get it - why rush towards the future, towards the end of your life... stay in the present moment, relax. Everything comes at the right time. And then I feel like I've been patient for long enough, and where's my reward for being so patient... and completely miss the whole point again. But as a friend said to me recently, "good things are worth the wait". He was right, about these flapjacks at least

Ingredients

200g butter

3-4 cups oats

1 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup linseeds

1/2 sunflower seeds

1/2 pumpkin seeds

Handful chopped dates

Tiny bit of butter

You melt the butter in a pan and add all the seeds. Fry these for a few minutes before adding the maple syrup, dates and oats. Keep mixing in the oats until you are happy with the ratio. Spread on a buttered baking tray and stick in a pre-heated oven at about 180 degrees C for about 20minutes. Score, then allow to cool before munching

My birthday cake

I've had a lot of crap birthdays. It may be something to do with my birthday being so close to Christmas (21st December)... But this year I decided to have a fabulous one instead. I started celebrating on Friday 16th and felt like it was my birthday until Thursday 22nd. I celebrated across three countries and with about 50 different people in total. This is the cake I had for breakfast in a small castle near Poznan

It was light and fluffy with dark chocolate topping and a blueberry filling - beautiful. And this is the delicious venison I ate while celebrating in a restaurant in Holland - "De Woord" near Wintersveik (I recommend highly at this time of year, when they have the "Wild" menu i.e. game season)

And that's me, my mum and my favourite auntie up there, in her converted farmhouse in The Netherlands. She's just beaten breast cancer and is looking fabulous!

I've had a lot of time to think in the last few days, travelling across Europe. While reading my present from Ruby - "Icons of Fashion: 20th Century" - one thing in particular has stood out and inspired me, which I promised myself that I'd keep in mind while writing my cookbook, although I think you can apply it to anything creative:

"It is very important to preserve traditions and culture. The idea is not... to make sweeping changes, but to be careful not to do things in the same way"

.("Comme de Garcons" founder Rei Kawakubo)