Sweet Snacks

Banana Bread with Creamy Walnut Frosting – Vegan & Gluten-free

Rich and moist banana bread with a smooth and creamy walnut frosting is the perfect afternoon treat. Made with oats, ground walnuts and banana, it’s perfect for breakfast too!  I do love a good slice of cake, but if I had the choice I would always pick a dense slice of banana bread. I love dense cakes and sometimes sponge cakes are just too dry for my liking. They're usually topped with some sort of frosting or come with a layer of jam in the middle to compensate for their dry texture, and the frosting is always sickly sweet and never healthy.  I created this recipe with the help of Flora's new dairy-free walnut spread. The flavour of the walnuts comes through beautifully, making it [...]

Peanut Butter Brownies Vegan, Gluten-free & Refined Sugar-free

Peanut Butter Brownies Vegan, Gluten-free & Refined Sugar-free Since my cookie dough brownies were such a hit, I thought I would create another brownie recipe using black beans, but this time flavoured with peanut butter. Because we all know chocolate and peanut butter make the most amazing flavour combination :D I also thought we could all do with a bit of comfort seeing that the British weather has skipped summer all together as it's beginning to feel more and more like autumn! It's been throwing it down with rain, windy and the temperature is falling. A good excuse to cosy up on the sofa with a blanket, a cup of tea and a delicious slice of these peanut butter brownies.  Just like the [...]

Lemon Blackberry Bars – Vegan & Gluten-free

Lemon Blackberry Bars - Vegan & Gluten-free This week is National Vegetarian Week and a good excuse to eat less meat and more fresh, in season produce. It runs from 15-21 May and it encourages everyone to eat vegetarian for the duration of that week. Obviously this is not created for people who already eat a vegetarian diet, but rather as a way to encourage meat eaters to consume less animal products and experiment with vegetarian foods of which there are plenty!  I've teamed up with Mornflake to create these lemon blackberry bars - a vegetarian/vegan friendly sweet treat to kick off national vegetarian week and to help bring awareness to the campaign.  With more and more evidence showing that vegetarian diets are associated with lower risks [...]

Strawberry Salted Caramel Cheesecake Bars

Strawberry Salted Caramel Cheesecake Bars Strawberries and chocolate are always a good combination. The complex flavour and sweetness of the strawberries complement the depth of taste and bitterness of the dark chocolate so well. Another great combination with either/or is salted caramel! Seriously, those three flavours are a combination made in heaven - one that you must try asap if you haven't already! Initially I had the idea of creating a salted caramel strawberry cheesecake, but I didn't just want to stop there. I wanted to make something a little different but equally moreish if not even more so. That's when I had the idea of creating these strawberry salted caramel cheesecake bars individually covered with a dark chocolate shell, because who doesn't love [...]

Healthy Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies

Healthy Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies Mmm cookies! If someone asked me if I was more of a cake girl or cookie girl, I would most likely say cookie girl! Of course it does depend on the cake/cookie, but overall I'm definitely more partial to a good cookie, especially when it's chocolate chip and homemade!  What I'm not a fan of are those large American style cookies that you get from supermarkets, bakeries and coffee shops. Those oversized, sickly sweet, fat laden cookies that don't have much flavour to them other than the taste of sugar!  These healthy chocolate chip pretzel cookies are lower in sugar, fat and are made using a mix of oats and ground almonds. With added dairy-free dark chocolate [...]

Raw Salted Caramel Brownies

Raw Salted Caramel Brownies A treat to satisfy your chocolate cravings without any processed sugar, processed oils or any other nasty added ingredients.  I'm a huge fan of energy/bliss balls - basically any snack made out of dates and nuts. They make a great snack because they're high in fibre, good fats and they're sweet without the need to add any kind of processed refined sugars. Nothing beats whole dates as a form of sweetener, not even the sugar-free varieties, which we are yet to find out their long-term effects as they're relatively new to our diets.  Instead of blending dates and nuts and shaping them into balls, I added in some cocoa powder into the mix and pressed the mixture into [...]

Chocolate Crumpets Vegan & Gluten-free with Salted Caramel Spread

Chocolate Crumpets Vegan & Gluten-free with Salted Caramel Spread Crumpets are such a quintessential British tea time treat. Griddle cakes that look like pancakes and cooked like pancakes only they're thicker, spongier/chewier and full of holes!  You'll find this treat in many British households, usually shop bought as the idea of making homemade crumpets seems so daunting and definitely a lot of work. That's what I thought anyway until I tried them myself. You do have to wait for the dough to rise, like with any homemade yeasted bread, but once that's done there isn't much to it!  I know you can now buy gluten-free crumpets, but they're not vegan. I wanted to create a version that both vegans and anyone [...]

Vegan Gluten-free French Fancies

Vegan Gluten-free French Fancies First of all I would like to wish my mum and all the amazing mothers out there a ?HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY? If you live in the UK you will be very familiar with french fancies. They're these cute mini sponge cakes, similar to petit four, with a jam centre and covered in different coloured icing - pink (strawberry), yellow (lemon) and brown (chocolate). I used to find the sponge in french fancies a little dry, which wasn't too bad since the jam and icing added a bit of moisture and complemented the whole thing, but I still prefer my cakes a little more moist, so I wanted to make mine a little denser and not as spongy. [...]

‘Nutella’ Stuffed Cookie Dough Balls

  'Nutella' Stuffed Cookie Dough Balls Nutella is one of those things I miss A LOT since cutting out dairy and junk food and trying to eat more consciously. I know eating a spoon of it won't kill me and if I really wanted to I would eat it, but it's easier for me to avoid such foods because once I have a taste, I want to eat the whole thing. I'm sure I'm not alone in this! It's like recently the hubby bought a bag of salted crisps and I had some while we were watching a film. I never crave salty foods, but since then I've had this crazy craving for crisps, despite always craving sweet food usually. Now all of a sudden all I [...]

Vegan Gluten-free Wagon Wheels

Vegan Gluten-free Wagon Wheels Wagon Wheels - another classic British treat I just had to recreate. Do you sense a theme here? It seems I'm drawn to making healthified, vegan and gluten-free versions of some of Britain's favourite treats at the moment. So far I've made my own versions of Oreos, Twix, Snickers, Bounty Bars, Ferrero Rocher, Hobnobs, Jaffa Cakes and now Wagon Wheels! What's next? Who knows, but I'm really enjoyed experimenting with such classic sweet treats, and you seem to be enjoying them too! I say a British classic, however; a quick search online tells me that Wagon Wheels actually originated in Australia before moving base here. Now they seem to be popular the world over, and that doesn't [...]

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