Creative Ways to Prepare Fruit for Healthy Desserts

Healthy desserts sounds like an oxymoron, but it doesn’t have to! There are so many ways to indulge your sweet tooth, meet a craving, or cap off a long day with a delicious treat that doesn’t have to be unhealthy. In fact, there is a whole range of dessert options that range from (slightly more) healthy desserts to great-tasting treats that pack a good nutritional punch.

Portions

If you aren’t quite ready to branch out into new, more nutritious desserts, then the place to start is with portion control. If you’re wondering about what a healthy portion of dessert might look like, start with the USDA’s MyPlate.

The USDA has replaced the formerly ubiquitous Food Pyramid with the MyPlate, but the idea is the same: MyPlate is a visual representation of what a balanced meal should look like. The reason?

As the USDA explains, “today, about half of all American adults have one or more chronic diseases, often related to poor diet. The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans emphasizes the importance of creating a healthy eating pattern to maintain health and reduce the risk of disease. Everything we eat and drink — the food and beverage choices we make day to day and over our lifetime — matters.”

The basic idea behind MyPlate is that half of your plate should contain fruits and vegetables; half of your grains should be whole grains; low-fat or fat-free yogurt and milk should be prioritized; proteins should vary; and you should aim to eat and drink less sodium, saturated fat, and added sugars.

Nature’s Healthy Desserts - Fruit

There were a few important hints about an easy way to utilize healthy desserts in that last paragraph. Did you catch them? The first was the recommendation to eat fewer added sugars (emphasis on added). The second was that at each meal, your plate should be composed of half fruits and vegetables.

What does this mean? Simple: the easiest way to turn desserts into healthy desserts is simply to eat fruit for dessert. And while fruits on their own will work just fine, you can also have fun with it. Some easy ways to elevate fruit to something that feels like a genuine dessert are:

Make Banana Swirl

Made famous (among preschoolers) on the PBS show Daniel Tiger, Banana Swirl is an amazing ice cream substitute with only one ingredient: bananas. To make banana swirl, peel and slice a few ripe (or overripe) bananas, throw them in the freezer until they are completely frozen, and then place the frozen banana slices in a blender until smooth. The result: a sweet, frozen treat that tastes exactly like banana ice cream - minus the ice cream.

Try Grilled Pineapples

Pineapples are delicious as they are, but if you want to experience a different version (with new flavors, temperatures, colors, and textures), then grilled pineapple slices is the way to go. Throw some pineapple slices on the grill for a few minutes on each side, and then take them off to either eat as they are, coat with honey, or serve on top of some frozen yogurt, and your taste buds will thank you.

Elevate the Fruit Salad

Fruit salads are a delicious way to enjoy a variety of fruits altogether. One way to get the variety of flavors and nutrients offered by a fruit salad, but with a twist, is to make a fruit shish-kabob. Simply use the wooden or bamboo skewers you would use to make a typical, savory shishkabob, and instead of grilled meats and vegetables, use fruits. A strawberry-cantaloupe-pineapple-kiwi-blueberry-grape shishkabob is not only delicious, but it also creates a rainbow -- a really fun healthy dessert for kids (and, let’s face it, adults).

For a sweet and savory mix, try this American Heart Association recipe for fruit kabobs with balsamic drizzle.

Experiment

If you’re making your desserts healthy by eating fruits, use the time to experiment. Try that strange, tropical fruit you’ve also wondered about in the grocery store. Ask around for recommendations of other people’s favorite unusual fruit. Make dessert a time for experimentation, or, if you’re a family who loves apples and bananas, go for that too! (And maybe experiment with dips, like peanut butter or honey).

Health.gov provides even more healthy desserts recipes (with and without fruit).

What are your favorite fruits? Do you have a creative way to prepare them for dessert?

Baked apples with cinnamon and brown sugar

If you have some old apples slowly shrivelling away in a fruit bowl somewhere in your house, this is a great way to use them up.

We had these baked apples for breakfast with yoghurt, baobab powder and pomegranate seeds. Yasin said it was a "magical" breakfast. It was, literally. Like something the fairies would eat. Simply cut the apples (we had 4 Braeburn apples) in large chunks, cover in a tablespoon of brown sugar and reason of cinnamon and bake at 150 degrees for about an hour.

Hackney Mess - the coolest summer dessert

I have spent the last two months playing with my food and writing. I've been taking forgotten Polish recipes and reworking them into a modern context; researching the origins of dishes that I've known since childhood but never thought twice about; and tweaking old family recipes. It's a dream come to true to be able to do this, and yet even living my dream has its difficult moments. This is absolutely OK,  because even though somehow society conditions us to think there will be a happy-ever-after, this is not life. Life is supposed to be challenging and as long as each difficult moment is taken as an opportunity to learn something then we're in a good place. Some days the writing doesn't flow for me and if I force it I risk putting myself off for the next day, so I'm learning to treat myself gently. Guilt trips do not work, what I need to do in this situation is find my inspiration. Other days, I've found it hard to cook, because I can't find ingredients I thought would be easy to come by or I don't feel like eating what I've planned to cook - through this, I'm learning to be flexible and adaptable. I have the added complication of having fallen pregnant at exactly the same time as my book deal happened. This was not ideal timing, but I definitely want this baby, so my partner and I are working it out. Through this added complication (blessing though it is) I'm learning to be more open minded. Perhaps I do not want to shoe-horn myself into someone else's home that isn't suited to me or have someone squeeze themselves in on top of me in order to have the traditional set up in time for the baby... I'm also learning that sometimes the best action is no action at all. Every day I am grateful for my beautiful, cosy flat, which gives me a feeling of much-needed security; the amazing opportunity to write the book of my dreams; my supportive family; a partner that is prepared to work on our relationship and wants this baby as much as I do; the little string bean that is growing into a human being inside me; and a host of other things. I'm also enjoying eating whatever I want: some of it is healthy and some of it, not so much. For the first time since childhood, it really doesn't matter. I am allowed to get fat. How liberating. I've been meaning to make this Hackney Mess for a long time -  a dessert idea that's been floating about my head, based on the traditional Eton Mess but a more colourful and flavour packed version.

The meringue is chocolate - whip up some egg whites with a pinch of salt. When they have formed peaks, start adding the sugar until the mixture thickens, finally add the cacao powder. Bake in a pre-heated over at 200 degrees C for 10min, then turn the oven off and leave them in there to cool. The fruit I used were juicy cherries - so of course you need to take the stones out first. Whip the whipping cream until fluffy then add the icing sugar and matcha powder, bit by bit, until you achieve the desired, light green colour and sweet flavour. You put the three components together in layers. And yes, Hackney Mess must be served in a jar.

Ingredients

2-3 egg whites

150g sugar

2 tablespoon raw cacao powder

150ml whipping cream

50g sugar

1 teaspoon matcha powder

Lots of cherries

Mango-mascapone semi-freddo dessert

The world has woken up. Little buds are appearing on trees, the sun's out almost every day, if only for a short while and there are even some cherry blossoms that are in full bloom, though not the ones in Victoria Park, which always take a bit longer for some reason. Last weekend, I was in Eastbourne on the coast and for a few, very brief moments it felt almost like Summer. One of those brief moments was sitting on the warm, sun-filled, wind-protected porch, eating this mango dessert and washing it down with champagne. 

This is just a step on from the Thai mango lassi and yes, yellow mangos are the best. Just blend all the ingredients down there to a smooth-ish consistency. It's nice to have a few tiny, juicy mango bits I find.

Champagne because we were celebrating my book deal. In my heart, I knew it was meant to happen, but it's still the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me. Now I have less than 6 months to produce the book. At the moment I am easing myself into it but very soon, I may have to give up everything else in my life.

Ingredients (makes 3)

2 yellow mangos

Handful ice cubes

150g mascapone cheese

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Amaranth porridge with berries

There's something that happens when I'm about to get on a plane. I always manage to either miss my flight or create some kind of unnecessary drama. Even when in other areas of my life I feel calm and content, the time comes to catch a flight and something inevitably goes wrong. I should be in Athens right now, but I'm not. I wouldn't say I'm London either. I'm occupying a space in between two worlds, neither solidly in one nor the other. Like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, I'm just not all there. Or here. Some would argue that this is a natural state of affairs for me and they'd have a point, yet at this moment in time this quality is so pronounced that I feel like parts of me could easily just disappear like they do to that cat. Yet like him, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm using this strange space to look at my life  objectively and make some small yet important changes, to experiment with how I normally do things. In my everyday life I'm often too busy in the action of doing to take a step back and reflect on how I could improve the process. There are infinite ways of doing things, why do we get stuck in one mode like machines I wonder... Some things just work so there is no need to change them, yes, but other things don't work, yet we get stuck in a habit - those are things I'm targeting right now. One habit that I have no intention of changing for the time being however, is porridge for breakfast. That's working out very well. There are so many variations that I can't see myself getting bored. I made this one with amaranth grains and berries the other day. It's a grain I've never used before and was a bit puzzled by, yet it turns out that it makes a brilliant porridge, less stodgy and sticky than oats

I cooked it first in lots of cold water. I'll be honest with you, I wanted to use it for a salad, yet I quickly noticed that it was turning into a porridge-like consistency and went out and bought some quinoa for the salad instead. I think the grains are actually too small for a salad and also I cooked them in too much water to allow them to separate. But for a porridge they were perfect. So the next morning I took a spoonful of the cooked amaranth and diluted it with plenty of almond milk. I allowed it to simmer, along with a handful of raspberries and blueberries, a pinch of salt and some honey for around 10min, until the raspberries disintegrated completely. Then I  added a bit more almond milk to reach a consistency I was happy with. Amaranth is completely new to me in this form (I've tried the leaves before), it has an unusual taste, neither sweet nor savoury, it's lost somewhere between the worlds just like me, so it needs strong, decided flavours that push it in either one direction or the other... I think I've just managed to empathize with a grain

Roast rhubarb and strawberry pancakes

Pancakes are such a Sunday food. Easy to put together, they're ideal for a lazy brunch or even supper after a hard day of playing on the banks of the river Thames, looking for hidden treasures as I've been doing today (this is not a normal Sunday activity for me by the way). And, of course, they give you that special pancake feeling, you know the one - like "today is a special day"

This is the season for British rhubarb, that strange vegetable-in-disguise that many people don't really know what to do with it. I think that strawberries are it's ideal companion. It's also a good way to use up less-than-satisfactory strawberries, which is what I've been getting a lot of recently. I roasted the two with plenty of good honey for about half an hour, before putting on my pancakes with dollops of yoghurt. I made the pancakes with coconut milk instead of normal milk, and fried them on coconut oil, which is both delicious and super-healthy

Quinoa blackberry porridge for the Spring/Summer breakfast in bed

During my long search for the perfect breakfast, I realized that my reasoning was inherently flawed. What is obvious to me now is that the perfect breakfast depends on the time of year, on where you are on the planet, and where you are in your mind. Whereas in the heat of Thailand the perfect breakfast might be a banana, some watermelon and pineapple with yoghurt and honey, in London in the midst of a long, damp Winter, nothing quite hits the spot for me on a day-to-day basis like congee. However, if you add a party night to mix, then my perfect breakfast suddenly turns into a BLT on ciabatta with mayo and a fresh OJ. As it gets warmer and the berries starting popping out, I start to crave red fruit with porridge or oats with yoghurt. In this in-between period that we have now, warm quinoa with berries is just perfect

The quinoa gives this a lightness that you don't get with oats, and the blackberries give it tang and that specific British flavour. You could just as easily replace them with another soft berry though. I cooked the quinoa in water, then when it was ready, added some goat's milk (I can't drink normal milk anymore), a pinch of salt, lots of honey and the blackberries. I cooked it all until the blackberries fell apart and the milk turned pink and frothy

A sweet bean salad

Last week I understood why funerals were invented. For me it wasn't about saying goodbye, because my gran wasn't there anymore and I was lucky enough to be able to do that a few weeks ago. This is a time to show respect for the life of another human being that touched yours. There's a distance and a severity to it. Or perhaps that's just a Polish funeral. But it's important to be there, to be honest and not hide away - to "man-up" anotherwords. I was amazed at my mum's inner strength and her ability to give a meaningful speech, in which she captured the essence of Babcia Ziuta, her mother, a person who "took life as it came", showing warmth and kindness to everyone she met. At the wake we were much more cheerful, reminiscing about gran's life and exchanging memories. We ate bigos, schabowe and this delicious, sweet bean salad made by auntie Majewska

Ingredients

Red kidney beans

Leek

Pineapple

Prunes

Mild hard cheese, cubed

Mayo

Salt and white pepper

Polish snacks and simmered pears

This past month has been one of the hardest in my life. Not in a horrible, traumatic way (see when I was breaking up with my ex two years ago), but in a natural, growing kind of a way. Of course, there have been times where I've swerved slightly into the dark and others where I attempted to be too light in order to distract myself, but those were fleeting moments and on the whole I've dealt with my grandma's illness and death as honestly as I could have done. There was a time, not so long ago, when the mere thought of it made go mad with anxiety and fear, but I guess when things happen in the right time and in the right way, then life is being kind. There were a couple of things I would have changed about the whole experience if I could, so that she suffered less, but that would have meant changing certain people which is something that I clearly don't have the power to do. So I'm trying to be understanding of the fact that everyone is damaged in some way and everyone is trying to heal (even if they are going about it in a way which hurts others and themselves)

 Last Friday, I had some friends round for a dinner of "przekaski" - Polish snacks. I made placki - that's the little potato cake you see up there with some creamy mushroom topping, a spicy beetroot salad, cauliflower in breadcrumbs and grilled some dried Polish sausage which we dipped in English mustard (as much as I love mild Polish mustards, I'm addicted to that English kick). For the placki, you need to grate a couple of large potatoes and a medium onion on the really small holes of the grater - so that they are basically raw mush. Try not to grate yourself. Season your mush well before frying in olive oil until golden, about 4min each side. The mushroom topping is a mixture of closed cup mushrooms and shitake mushrooms, chopped and fried in butter, in a pan where they have room to brown. Then I added a little bit of garlic, soya sauce and some single cream. If that up there looks like a tiny portion, it's because I forgot to take pictures of our first and second helpings and that's all we had left by the time I remembered!

And here are the pears which I simmered in a mixture of ginger wine and cherry vodka (Wisniowka), with a couple of cinnamon sticks, for about an hour. I covered the pan and clearly left the gas on too high because before I knew it the whole thing was on fire in the most spectacular way. I wish I had thought to take a photo but we were all panicking slightly to tell you the truth, and then Tommy blew it out, thank god. I'm glad he didn't set himself on fire, as when my dad did that once he singed his eyebrows, and Tommy has a lot of hair

Apricotina with almond stuffing

I don't know if you've heard, but I am trying not to eat (processed) sugar. It's become a bit of an ongoing joke at work, because I blatantly do still eat it. The point is, I am trying. I definitely don't eat it every day now. You may be thinking "why?". Well, it's because I feel that I am addicted to it - I swear that trying to give it up has been harder than giving up smoking. I also want to be free of the ups and downs in mood that sugar creates. I have enough of those without it, thank you very much. Having said all this (and now you'll know why this has become a bit of a joke), I have a friend coming round for dinner today, and I'd hate to deprive her of a dessert. I can't blog about any more sugar-free flapjacks, as the whole point of this blog is to introduce you (and me) to new things, to be creative and inspiring, so I will give up on the giving up for one night only. And probably a few other days and nights when I am tempted by something which is worth breaking the rules for. After all, life would be pretty joyless if you never broke your own rules

Apricotina are Middle-Eastern apricot drops, which take about 5min to make. You grab some dried apricots and mince them - I used about 150g and a blender, you could also chop them really finely. You then mix them with about half a tablespoon of icing sugar, kneeding them to paste, before rolling them in more icing sugar until they're pretty little balls. I stuffed an almond in the middle, Claudia Rodin (A New Book of Middle Eastern Cooking) suggests a mixture of ground almonds and sugar as stuffing. I think they're delicious with mint tea, my friend Mariana says they're like something from outer space

Honey, date and walnut flapjacks, sugarfree

You may be wondering what's going on with all the flapjack recipes recently. The truth is, since I liberated myself from the maple and sesame flapjack, there's been a bit of an oaty orgy going on at my house. So here were are - another brilliant combination. I'm starting to think you can't really go wrong with them, though of course I should know that you can go wrong with anything. So if you want a formula then I guess it's this: 3 cups oats to 1 cup something crunchy and nutty and 1 cup something sweet and chewy (plus butter and some kind of sweetner). This time I've sweetened them with delicious honey from some distant family's beehives in Poland

Ingredients

3 cups oats

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup chopped dates

200g butter

1 cup honey

Autumn plum dumplings - Knedle

Although I'm back in Autumnal London now, I still have one thing left to tell you about from Poland. It's one of my all time favourite dishes - plum dumplings. We used tiny little plums for these we call "the Hungarians", or if you want to be really precise they're the Hungarian women ("Wegierki"). Don't ask me why in Poland every food has to have a nationality, because I haven't a clue, but it is quite sweet. Unless you take offense at having a plum, mushroom or type of herring named after you. Anyway, these tiny plums fit perfectly, one into each dumplings, but I haven't seen them in England, so you may just need to us half a normal plum. You can also make delicious "knedle" with peaches, if you prefer, or even strawberries, but in my family, it's always been plum

Ingredients

350g potatoes, mashed without butter

125g flour

1 small egg

pinch of salt

250g plums (peaches/strawberries)

100g breadcrumbs

50g butter

Brown sugar to serve

If you doubled the ingredients, you would still only need a large egg. Really for this amount, you need half an egg, but since that doesn't exist (unless you have a quail's egg handy), we used a whole one. This made the mixture a bit wet, but this doesn't matter, you just need lots of flour when forming it. You combine the mashed potatoes with the flour, salt and egg and blend with your hands, until you create a doughy consistency. Then, roll it into a baguette shape, like you can see on the second photo up there. Cover the plumbs with plenty of brown sugar. Cut the baguette shape into even slices, and make a little dent in each one - the sugary plum goes in here. Seal it thoroughly. Bring some water to the boil and place all the dumplings in it. Whilst they're cooking, melt some butter in a frying and add the breadcrumbs - cook until nice and brown. When the dumplings swim out to the top, they're kind of ready, but they'll taste better if you give them a few more minutes - maybe 5-6. Drain them, then transfer to the frying pan with breadcrumbs. Make sure that they are all properly coated and add brown sugar to taste. A great dish for when you feel that first nip of Autumn in the air, the only thing that could have made it better for me would have been a lovely, cold glass of Gewurztraminer

Pancakes with roasted cinamon apples

Ironically, ever since pancake day I have acquired an unquenchable desire for pancakes, and am eating them loads. I use this recipe, which Mariana would argue is a crepe recipe not a pancake one, but I honestly can't work out what the actual difference is. Anyway, I have a new filling idea for you, inspired by my friend-at-work's mum - roasted apples with honey, cinamon and mascapone

I made these for the lovely Magda when she was here last weekend. Just last Sunday we were eating these while watching The Mighty Boosh, drinking green tea, recovering from a well earned party. Happy days...

Delicious crepes with fruit and mascarpone for a lazy Bank Holiday

I really, really love it when, just when you least expect it, life gives you a little present. Like today, for no apparent reason, I had the nicest Bank Holiday Monday. I managed to do all the things that make me happy (well, most of them), like snoozing, cooking, reading, writing, catching up with friends, playing with cats, and walking around Hackney. It wasn't exactly extraordinary, but it was kind of perfect. Apart from my fractured rib, that is, which makes it a bit difficult to breathe - I did something bad to it by coughing so much over the past couple of months, and then couch raving the night away on New Year's Eve pissed it off beyond measure. Anyway, in the afternoon, I went over to the lovely Mariana's for a gossip and crepes. We'd usually have cookies with white tea, but as I have given up sugar, we needed to find a suitable replacement  - something tasty, sweet and comforting. We did a damn good job, even if I say so myself, with an amazing feast of crepes and fruit with mascapone, drizzled in honey. The amounts down there will make about six smallish ones, perfect for two

Crepes

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

Aprox 200ml milk

Aprox 70g plain flour

50g butter

Pinch of sea salt

Fruit of your choice

Mascarpone cheese

Honey

We melted half the butter for the pancake mix, then used half of it for frying, pouring the old, burnt stuff out each time and adding a little bit more fresh stuff. Beat the eggs first, add the milk, keep beating, then add the flour, with a pinch of salt and the melted butter. Make sure you blend the ingredients really well, so there are no lumps. Normal people would probably use a blender for this, however, we used chopsticks, with surprisingly smooth results. Before spreading the mascarpone, we mixed it for a while to improve the texture, then spread it as evenly as we good over the hot crepes, followed by sliced of fruit and then drizzled honey over everything, before rolling up in various different ways, and munching. I can't even begin to explain how good it tasted, an ideal recipe for a catch up with friends or, as Mariana put it "breakfast for a lover". How romantic! I'm taking notes...

Cherry-peach oat and yoghurt pot

So these little oat and yoghurt pots are my favourite breakfast at the moment. I am one of those people who is hungry every two hours, and oats are one of the few things that really fill me up. And as it's too warm to be eating porridge, this is an ideal alternative

In my previous post, I made a raspberry and almond pot, whereas today, it was peach and cherry. I poured boiling water over the peaches, in order to peel them easily, and blended them along with the cherries, greek yoghurt and honey

I then combined the yoghurt mixture with the oats (to soften the oats and make them less dry, soak them overnight in oat milk/water/fruit juice) and divided it into little pots - now I have breakfast for the next three days. I have also been eating plenty of salads throughout the summer, and have done recipes on YouTube for Salade Nicoise and Goat's cheese and mushroom salad - enjoy while the sun is still shining, something tells me it's not going to be for much longer!

More berry recipes

I am almost satiated with seasonal berries. I have been eating them in different forms almost every day - I miss them so much throughout the year, that I have to get my fill in the summer months. And I'm so nearly there... but before that happens here's a couple of berry recipes from this week, starting with another pasta one. I realize that  people can't quite get used to the idea of sweet pasta (here's an earlier blueberry pasta recipe) but just look at rice pudding - it's a very similar concept. Except this doesn't have to be eaten as a pudding... Anyway, it's an incredibly simple recipe - you just cook the berries with the sugar and vanilla essence for about 5min, until they turn into a sauce consistency. Cook the pasta separately, in plenty of salty water. Combine the creme fraiche with the berry mixture, and warm gently. And finally combine the two!

Berry pasta - ingredients

Pasta shapes

Strawberries

Blackberries

Creme fraiche

Vanilla essence

Caster sugar

And this is a berry breakfast, which is just natural yoghurt, blended with raspberries, honey, a little vanilla essence,  then mixed with oats (soaked in juice or milk before to make it even better) and some toasted almonds

I made a few of these, so I could have breakfasts waiting for me in the fridge in the mornings, and not have to worry about whether we have milk, or tea, or bread in the flat... we're not very well supplied. However, when I move into my new flat, sometime very soon (I hope), it will be a completely different story. I am seeing masses of various sizes of pots and pans, sharp knives, a clean, non leaky, well-stocked fridge and an ice-cream maker...

Delicious berry desert

I went fruit picking in Oxford at the weekend and ended up with masses of berries in the fridge, so I had to figure out something to do with them all. I also had some gelatine staring down at me from the shelf in an intimidating manner. I bought it by accident and it's been sitting there for a while now, just staring at me every time I open the cupboard. I'm always intimidated if I haven't used an ingredient before, but it's good to push yourself, and it turned out that gelatine is stupidly easy to use

Ingredients

Punnet of strawberries (aprox 500g)

Punnet of rasberries (aprox 250g)

170-200ml sweetened condensed milk

2 gelatine leaves

Blend the berries with the condensed milk. I used a 170g tub, and ate a bit of it (I couldn't help myself I LOVE THE STUFF) so it was probably closer to 150g what went in. And they did turn out a little tart, therefore I recommend using more. Soak the gelatine leaves in a bit of water, drain and melt over a hot stove. Add it to the berry blend. Now, it's ready to pour into ramekins and cool in the fridge for a couple of hours before eating. There are infinite varieties of this kind of mousse, and I still have quite a few of those leaves left - I feel an era of gelatine-based deserts coming on...

Blueberry pasta - not at all weird

I know, I know, it sounds weird. But in Poland we often eat pasta in sweet dishes. And it is so delicious, and so easy to make that I had to write about it. At this time of year, blueberries are in abundance, so we use them. As you can see down there, they are not exactly like the blueberries that we get in the UK, they are smaller and harder, and taste a bit different too. But I expect that you can replace the blueberries with a different variety quite easily, because, well, why not? You can also use a different berry altogether if you so choose, I think blackberries would work well for instance

Ingredients

Pasta

Blueberries

Sugar

Sour cream

You simply cook the pasta as normal, in salted water. In a separate pan, you cook the blueberries, along with the sugar. Add the sugar according to your own taste. Then combine the two, and stick a dollop of cream on top. Didn't I say it was easy?

Sweet summer soup - strawberry and rhubarb

The cuisine that I remember from my childhood in Poland was always seasonal. We would eat this kind of cold soup on hot summer days, sitting under a fruit tree in someone's garden or dacha. You can use all sorts of fruit - sour cherry soup is one of my favourites, but these type of cherries are practically impossible to get hold of in the UK. Strawberries by themselves make a lovely, sweet soup, but it lacks a certain depth of flavour, whereas adding rhubarb gives it a sweet-sour taste that we poles love so much

Ingredients

2 litres water

 80g small pasta shapes per person

1kg strawberries

2 large stalks of rhubarb

4-5 tablespoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon cloves (about 7 or 8)

Half a vanilla pod

Large single cream

The above quantities make about 8 portions. You start off by peeling the rhubarb and cooking it in the water, with the cloves and vanilla, until soft, which takes about 20 minutes. While it's cooking, mash the strawberries and sugar with a potato masher. Add these to the pan. Put the heat on low and cook together for at least another 20 minutes. In the meantime, cook the pasta shapes in plenty of water with some salt in it, as you would normally. I used sconcigli, which worked fine, but it would have been even better with smaller pasta shapes. Then let the soup cool - my mum always puts it ouside for an hour - before  adding the cream. Serve the soup at room temperature, on top of the pasta shapes

As you can see, it's like summer in a bowl. Needless to say, this isn't the sort of soup you would serve as a starter - it should be served during the day, as a light lunch, on it's own. I have never known any child that doesn't love this soup, and some people, like myself, never quite grow out it

The Breakfast Experiment

And we start at the beginning: breakfast. I have yet to find the perfect breakfast and so far the month of January has been dedicated to that search

The healthy breakfast was where it all began, me being on a post-Xmas detox. On a cold, damp, grey Monday morning I was positively dreading eating the above fruit salad. I was surprised at how delicious and moreish it actually was. I prepared it the day before, cutting up kiwis, bananas, pears, nectarines and apples, and adding tinned mandarin and grapefruit segments. I squeezed and little bit of lemon over it so that the apples would not go brown over night. I made enough to last for 3 days for both me and Jamie (my boy who eats huge amounts of everything). I served it with bio yoghurt and honey and sprinkled with black sesame seeds that I bought in the Japanese Centre in Piccadilly Circus. My mouth is watering now I am just writing about it so it was a definite success: 8/10 (points taken off for being neither warm nor seasonal)

Then came the experimental breakfast. I had lots of brown rice and decided to make some kind of a rice pudding-type dish. I cooked it with milk and single cream, and added honey, cinamon, raisins, black sesame seeds and almonds to the mix - all the things I love - and chilled it overnight. The next morning I heated it up with some milk - it was revolting and I would not recommend it to anyone - but have included the recipe in case someone has a pressing desire to try this concoction: 1/10 (the point being given because I'm sure it's not as horrible as some things out there)

The boring breakfast was next, cos sometimes you just want some toast and a cup of tea. I won't bore anyone with the details of my toast making, all I'll say is it has been a fallback breakfast for me all month  so it would be sad not to give it any mention here: 7/10

And that brings me to my current favourite - the warm-your-cockles-porridge-breakfast. It may not look like much but that was the most delicious little bowl of food I've had in a long time. It's very quick and easy too - I just warmed a large handful of oats in a bowl-full of milk (I like it to be very runny) with some chopped banana, a pinch of sea salt, a tablespoon of honey and some mixed spice. Don't leave it on its own for too long or it'll get gloopy - you have time to slather some cream on but not to have a shower. Once it's hot through, it's ready: 9.5/10 (I have to leave hope of there being something a bit better out there otherwise life would not be worth living)

There was also the elusive breakfast I had this morning... last night when I was coming back drunkenly from a girls' night out at the Alpine Lodge (fab by the way) I bought a tomato in a Turkish shop with this amazing idea of what I was going to have for breakfast this morning. The tomato went missing in the night and I spent 10 minutes looking for it this morning. I ended up miserably eating toast: 3/10 (Points for the great idea, the exercise and the toast) I have since learned that Jamie had eaten the tomato as a midnight snack