30 April 2016

philosophy is the talk on a cereal box


In testament either to how good this granola is, or to what a monumental grub I am - why not both? - the last time I ate this granola was yesterday, in a charming tableau: I was on my bed, face smeared with organic coconut oil (it felt like a vaguely beneficial thing to do) and about to take a nap. I was, however, ravenously hungry. The jar of granola was the only thing I had to eat and it also happened to be on the floor by the bed. I sighed - so dustily unsatisfying, why couldn't I have a jar of cheeseburgers by my bed instead - and listlessly opened the jar to paw myself out a handful.

One chewy, buckwheat-rich mouthful in and I was all, oh that's right, I make amazing granola like it's no big deal. Verily, I began chugging it straight from the jar, which obviously-in-hindsight ended up with granola dust tipping out heavily onto my face and sticking to the coconut oil that I was thickly daubed in. This...this did not stop me. I kept eating it, while it was also stuck to my face, and like, I did shower, but it was quite some time later. If this visual doesn't impel you to make and eat this granola then frankly I understand completely.

This first time I ate it, I was catsitting for a good friend, on their wooden floor in a sunbeam like I myself were also a cat, eating it with almond milk and coconut butter, and reverently watching Beyonce's new visual album and masterpiece, Lemonade.


My takes on Lemonade are absolutely not required, but I will just say that it's one of the more exciting and beautiful and heartstoppingly good things I have ever witnessed, and whatever your thoughts hitherto on Beyonce and whether the music she makes is your kind of thing, you should 100% watch this. (Seriously: if you can sit through The Wall, you can easily make some time for this.) I was utterly transfixed.

This granola is largely comprised of buckwheat, which is super good for you and majorly gluten-free, despite the use of wheat in its name. I find this hilariously cavalier. Like what if a dog was all "I'm a horse. I'm not actually a horse, it's just the name of my species. Call me a horse!" That was an appallingly ineffectual analogy but I'm very tired so that allows me to get away with such things.)

But anyway - buckwheat has a pleasing crunch to it and that same kind of non-committal I-am-your-breakfast flavour that oats have, making it an ideal background to whichever direction you'd like to take your granola in. I decided to have coconut be a major player, as if it were as important as the buckwheat itself rather than just a mixed-in secondary thing, if that makes sense. I'd been given some dried cranberries and so it seemed a reasonable idea to add them to it, and they work beautifully - little bursts of sour-sweet liveliness amongst all the mellow coconut. This is very, very easy to make and gives you a great big jarful. To make the coconut butter that I had sprinkled on top of it, just place two cups of toasted coconut chips in the food processor and blitz them for ages and ages until you're scared that your processor will blow up, at which point let it cool down, and continue on until you've got what looks like peanut butter, but tastes like white chocolate. I let it firm up and harden, which made it even more like chocolate. It was a very good time.

buckwheat, cranberry and cinnamon granola

a recipe by myself

two cups hulled buckwheat
half a cup LSA mix (or other similar ground up thing, like plain ground almonds) 
one cup coconut chips/shredded coconut
one cup dried cranberries
two teaspoons of cinnamon but feel free to add more 
one cup mixed nuts and seeds, eg walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds etc, all roughly chopped
two tablespoons chia seeds (optional

Put the buckwheat in a large bowl or measuring jug and cover with water. Leave to sit for about an hour, by which point the grains should have swollen up and absorbed a lot of the water (and feel free to top it up if need be.)

Set your oven to 130 C. Drain and rinse the buckwheat in a sieve, then spread fairly evenly in a thin layer on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Pop the tray in the oven and leave it for about half an hour. Put everything else except the cranberries and chia seeds onto the tray, turn the oven off and let it toast slightly in the remaining heat of the oven (or you can just leave it there cooking for another 20 mins, this is just my small attempt at being conscious of power usage and stuff.)

Stir in the cranberries and chia seeds if using, add more of anything that you feel like it needs more of, and then tip into a large jar. 


This is the cat I got to hang out with. He's the same one I was looking after over Christmas and he is a character. I was incredibly grateful however that this time he did not bring me any offerings of rat. 

look at this snug little piglet


Oh yeah, and I bleached my hair the other day and instead of becoming some kind of platinum goddess it turned peach, for the sake of my poor hair I've decided to roll with it for a while though. No less than three separate people have been all "Debbie Harry!" at me though so I am now delighted with it. 
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title from: What I Am, by Emma Bunton, aka Baby Spice. It's soooo nineeetieeeeees and so great. 
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music lately

Cream, Prince. Like many, I was massively saddened by his recent death. This song hasn't got any particular significance (I do remember dancing to it in a club in Greece one time I guess) but ugh it's brilliant. So brilliant.

LEMONADE. Find it. 
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next time: I made amazing fudge. AMAZING. You can make it too. 

21 April 2016

pile on many more layers, and i'll be joining you there

three chocolate cakes sandwiched together with cream cheese icing and crushed up creme eggs and you can't see it but there's also an implied *painting nails emoji*

Well, Mars may be in retrograde and my April tarot card may be the tarot card equivalent of a heavy resigned sigh, but: ya girl is out here being thirty finally. (She says, quite thirty-ish-ly.) It seems only right that the first blog post I do after my birthday is for a birthday cake, yeah? Not my own, but instead one I made for my pal-and-colleague's girlfriend's 21st, because that's a thing I do sometimes. Such a momentous occasion and an honour of a task calls for something a little no-holds-barred, and with the simple brief of "Cadbury Creme Egg" I set to work on what turned out to be this three layer masterpiece. Being the dingus I am, I stupidly only took a few cursory snaps of it on my phone rather than sitting it down and lovingly photographing it with my proper camera, but I was so pleased with the results - like, look at that thing! It's beautiful! - that I decided to blog about it anyway, hasty photos and all. Who knows when you, yourself, might need to make a three layer creme egg cake!

champagne for my real friends

As for my birthday, I won't sugar-coat it for you: it was wonderful! It started when the clock ticked over to midnight the night before because I was still working; however all the hugs and frolics made it fun and I liked that I got to catch my birthday in the act, right as it started, without wasting a drop of it. As someone who wastes a lot of time fretting about wasting time, that was nice. The day proper had a professional hair wash and straighten like I am a fancy rich woman who just does that, real champagne, delicious brunch, the receiving of exciting gifts like tequila and a gilded bowl and Lana del Rey vinyl and a rather gobsmackingly beautiful record player; rewatching Once More With Feeling; a phone call home where tales of my birth and incredulity at the passage of time since then were recounted, and then lashings of wine and platters and selfies with beauties at the place where everybody knows your name (yeah, that's right, I went back to work to hang out on my birthday, that's how much I like the place.)

a bad but maybe useful photo of the three layers waiting to be iced

So, the cake! Oddly enough it was incredibly un-stressful to make - I made it in my mornings between doing wall-to-wall shifts at work and was still generally very serene the entire time. The mixture generously makes three moist, rich cakes with near-perfect tops for stacking and icing (I sliced a bit off one to make it super evenly flat, and this is how I know it tastes extremely good.) The icing of it is also very straightforward, and in fact the hardest thing about it is getting your hands on some creme eggs. I was going to ice the whole lot like a more traditional cake but decided to leave the sides nakedly exposed with the icing tightly spread into every gap a la momofuku - it's actually much easier, and that way you can see the cakes themselves in a "you're damn right this cake is three layers tall" kind of way and it's all rakishly messy yet neat at the same time. 



I could've gone for a more hardcore filling but decided that the tang of the cream cheese would gently counteract the bone-dissolving sweetness of the fondant inside the eggs while still showcasing them. Honestly, the more novelty involved the more serious and thoughtful you have to be. This cake is so majestic and tall and the creme eggs look so cute all halved and nestled in together that you really don't have to worry about any further decoration but there's also nothing stopping you - my one concession was to quickly melt a caramac bar and pour it onto the top layer to echo the look of the eggs' filling, but it's not that necessary.

These recipe instructions are long as hell, I grant you, but it's honestly more or less chill. I just like to reeeeally explain stuff. As I point out in the recipe, I only had two caketins so baked two layers at once followed by a third, and it all worked out. Also, this would be easier with a cake mixer probably but I used a mere wooden spoon and honestly didn't even do that great a job of creaming the butter and sugar and it STILL worked out fine so - let's all just breathe.

triple layer creme egg cake

I made the actual cake itself by following the recipe from this site pretty well to the letter; all the random measurements are a bit of a faff but the cake same out perfect so I'm happily and trustingly passing it on to you. I deviated and made my own icing, if you wanted to take this cake in a whole other direction you could use whatever filling and icing you like. It's a very good starting point.

cake:

one and a half cups good cocoa powder
one and a half cups boiling water 
one tablespoon instant espresso powder (or plain instant coffee if it's all you can find)
three quarters of a cup of sour cream
one tablespoon vanilla extract
375g soft butter
two and a half cups sugar
three large eggs
one and three-quarter cups plain flour
one and a quarter teaspoons baking soda
a pinch of salt

Take three 20cm springform caketins and line the bases with baking paper. Grease the sides with butter and sprinkle a little cocoa over them, shaking the tins about till they're fairly evenly covered with a cocoa dusting. Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. 

In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the cocoa, coffee powder, water, and sour cream till smooth. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together till creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time till thoroughly incorporated, then add about a third of the flour and baking soda (you're gonna want to sift them if you're going to all this trouble, the last thing you need is baking soda lumps) along with the cocoa mixture in alternating quantities, mixing till it's a suddenly-enormous dark, smooth chocolatey batter. 

Divide the batter evenly between the three cake tins, smoothing down the tops. Place them all in the oven and bake for thirty or so minutes, rotating their positions on the oven shelves halfway through to ensure even baking. If you only have two pans, then just bake two cakes using 2/3 of the cake mixture, then while they're cooling, put the remaining third of the batter in one of the used cake tins and bake that after. This is what I did and it was totally fine. 

Allow the cakes to cool completely. 

Icing: 

100g soft butter
500g cream cheese (this sounds like a lot but it's just two of those Philadelphia packets) at room temperature
two cups icing sugar, but have more just in case
five or so creme eggs (perhaps grab a few extra in case anything goes wrong.) 

Make sure both the butter and the cream cheese are soft, and your icing sugar isn't lumpy, and then just mix the hell out of all three ingredients till you have a ton of icing. 

Assembly

Slice the peaked tops off any of the cakes if they've risen too much, so that they're all more or less flat. Place one cake on your chosen serving plate, and place a good dollop of icing in the centre. Spread it out fairly evenly using the side of a knife. Unwrap one creme egg, roughly chop it, and sprinkle/drop the whole lot evenly on top of the icing. Then place another cake layer carefully on top. 

Don't worry if there are massive gaps between the layers, we'll take care of that later. Repeat this process with the next layer of cake and another egg. 

Finally, put the top layer of cake on and spoon most of the remaining icing on top. You want a decently thick, even layer on here. Now, using the side of the knife, smear remaining icing into any gaps along the sides, running the knife's side around the sides of the cake to press it all in and to create a messy yet smooth look. Does that make sense? You kind of want the cake to look like it has just fallen out of a cylinder. Halve three creme eggs and arrange them, cut side up, on top of the cake. I melted a caramac bar and drizzled it into the centre just to add to the creme egg look, but it's not essential. You now have a damn creme egg cake. 



So I ate a bit of cake off-cuttage and a lot of icing and loved it all, but in order to strike real faith in your hearts about this recipe, let me quote the actual recipient of the cake, the birthday lady herself: "Argh it was amazing! With all of the layers and all of the creaminess and chocolate and just the fact that a cream egg could be transformed into a cake. Super awesome and delicious". 

I had a lot of fun making this cake and it was such a nice opportunity; and should you ever be called upon to make a fancy big cake I definitely recommend this one. If creme eggs are emphatically not your jam, I think this would be amazing with roughly chopped caramel-filled chocolate covering it with the caramel dripping everywhere; or with smashed up oreos, or with milk chocolate melted and drizzled all over the top, you see what I mean? For an enormous time-consuming cake made to a very specific brief it's really quite versatile. 

what a cute 30 year old.

Finally: fun birthday fact! It turns out that if you say "Happy Birthday" to me I'll immediately say it back to you without thinking. I'm not sure if it's cute or weird or both (the Laura Vincent Story) but it's what my brain has decided is a fantastic reaction and I can't break it. Not that I  - or indeed, you - have to worry about it for another year. Happy birthday! 
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title from: Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I may not be inspired by Pink Floyd to write poetry anymore as I was in my teens - for which we can all be relieved - but this song still goes off. Very slowly. And what an imperative in that title! 
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music lately: 

Something To Sing About, from Once More With Feeling. As I said, on my birthday I rewatched this, the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon can be ever so Joss Whedony but I'll never deny the incredible cleverness that went into writing this episode. All the songs are brilliant and Something To Sing About is 100% NOT the best place to start if you don't know the story because of the massive spoilers and lack of context but it's still my favourite and you should watch it anyway. Buffy's eyes! The discordant wobble when she sings "heaven!" Spike's half smile when he sings back at her! The time signature changes! I died. 

By My Side, Godspell. I busted out my copy of the original broadway cast recording of the musical Godspell on vinyl and while it hilariously does not hold up, the music is still endearing and By My Side is still one of the most beautiful songs ever written. 

Penguins and Polarbears, by Millencollen. Couldn't say why, but I truly adore pop-punk singers when they sound completely congested, which Millencollen delivers upon handsomely. If the lead singer makes you want to swallow an antihistamine for your own safety, then chances are I'm all over it. (There's a point during the Green Day Bullet in a Bible concert performance of Brain Stew where I'm pretty sure lead singer Billie Joe is literally just dribbling incomprehensively and I love it.)
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next time: I think I mentioned last time that I made homemade matcha mayonaise but I also made this awesome granola stuff. Either way: deliciousness awaits you. 

15 April 2016

i'm free but i'm focused, i'm green but i'm wise


Ever since I was able to form cognitive thoughts I've been seriously into horoscopes and similar things. I can't decide whether to joke that this means I've been into them since last week or, to paraphrase the T-Rex song over the opening credits of Billy Elliot, to imply that I was analysing my star sign in the womb, but either way, yeah. It's a thing. It's my birthday on Sunday which means that my usual self-absorption and introspection is now off the scale. I can't stop thinking about myself! With all this in mind, my tarot card for this month was all, "don't focus on what you don't have and don't push people away if you're feeling down and don't be stupid you stupid idiot" and my horoscopes are all telling me about how Mars is going into retrograde on my birthday, which like, why doesn't the shunned fairy aunt in Sleeping Beauty just turn up and predict that I'm going to prick my finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a coma or something, and all in all I'm finding it a bit hard to just relax and be myself at the moment. It's not because of what the tarot card and horoscopes said, but it's more like I'm hyper aware of trying to not do stuff wrong because of their advice and I end up like a small bird flying into windows as a result. Classic Aries? Classic me, really. 

(Seriously though, if you ever read descriptions of the various star signs it'll be all, "Virgo - steadfast and thoughtful" and "Sagittarius people are ever so open-minded and motivated" and "Cancers are loyal and intensely nurturing" and then "Aries are big idiot babies who hit their head a lot and will not stop shouting to get your attention." I mean, I don't deny it...) 

I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah

However! I'm not all uselessness. A particular horoscope that I joyfully subscribe to is the wonderful Meredith Graves' Stargrazing column for Lucky Peach magazine. It's food-related horoscopes and they're very fun and interesting to read (truly - check yours out) and this month I was advised to get into soup, basically because I needed to be really kind and gentle to myself - funny that - and since I wasn't in the mood for actual soup I decided instead to go find the most aggressively, ludicrously healthy ingredients I could lay my hands up on and make a thing out of that in the name of self-care. Those ingredients were matcha powder and chia seeds.

And that's how I ended up with this matcha coconut raspberry chia pudding. Matcha powder is ground up green tea leaves and apparently one teaspoon of it has the power of 20 glasses of green tea, although it all depends on which Pinterest pin you're reading. I nevertheless feel very calm and trusting of it. Chia seeds are little microbeads of intense goodness, with a billion omega's and proteins and vitamins and antioxidants. Put them together and nothing will ever go wrong in your life, ever.

I'm lost but I'm hopeful, baby

Chia pudding is essentially a delivery mechanism for chia seeds to get into your stomach, but it is delicious. And easy. The seeds absorb liquid with the-thirst-is-real enthusiasm and end up like a cross between jelly and sago (which might sound horrifying, but go with it, please.) Pink and green are a rather ultimate colour combination in my opinion so scattering freeze-dried raspberries across the top helped both visually and flavour-wise, but honestly use whatever fruit you like - passionfruit would be cool here, as would defrosted frozen berries, canned pears, or juicy slices of ripe mango. Whatever fruit you put up on there will complement the delicate green flavour of the matcha-tinged coconut and look lovely.

And yeah, the flavour is what I would describe as very green. It's green tea! What did you expect? There's nothing wrong with this, but I add a little honey to gently sweeten it and mellow out any intense fresh-cut grass vibes. My tastebuds appreciated this - yours might too.

Wait, one more thing - okay so matcha powder and chia seeds are both expensive ingredients, but once you've got them you only need to use a teaspoon or two at a time and thus they last near-on forever. This is me here, I wouldn't just casually tell you to buy something pricey! (Without getting defensive about it first.)

matcha, coconut and raspberry chia pudding

a recipe by myself although let us be real, I am 100% not the the inventor of this or anything. This is just what I made for myself. 

one teaspoon matcha powder 
around 125ml/half a cup of coconut milk or your choice of milkstuff
one teaspoon of honey or similar - I feel like agave syrup would be perfect here
one tablespoon of chia seeds
a handful of shaved coconut or coconut threads
a couple of tablespoons of freeze-dried raspberries

Using the teaspoon you measured them with, mix the matcha powder, coconut milk and honey together in a glass or whatever receptacle you're making this in - I recommend a glass because that way you can see the pretty layers of colour, but that's just me. Also when I say teaspoon and tablespoon I don't, for once, mean the kind that you measure baking ingredients with. This stuff isn't an exact science, so just use the kind of spoon you find in the cutlery draw and don't worry about whether they're heaped spoonfuls or whatever. Likewise just add more coconut milk if your glass doesn't look full enough. 

Stir in the chia seeds, making sure there aren't any lumps, and then refrigerate the glass for about an hour, although you can leave it longer, and then when you're ready to eat it, pile it up with coconut shavings and freeze-dried raspberries and wade in with a spoon. 


and what it all comes down to is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet

It's so healthful that it seems like you're gonna actually levitate after eating it. I've made it almost every day since, and while I can't entirely tell if I feel more brilliant or not, it's got to be doing something, right? It's as easy to consume as it is to make- the swollen chia seeds give it this soft, barely-set texture and the zing of raspberries and quiet sweetness of the coconut milk work beautifully with the verdant-as matcha powder. It's also remarkably filling, so makes an ideal breakfast or mid-snack snack. 

And what with turning thirty and all, despite having done a deal with the devil so I look barely 22 it certainly doesn't hurt to think of one's health more, right? (I'm not being conceited here, it's actually bordering on super weird how young I look?) (it's also how I know I'm getting proper old: I used to be really indignant about being ID'd and now I'm like, "awwww yeah") And it seems this is how I prefer to do health: by slothing about all day and then engaging in hardcore consumption of actual green tea leaves ground into dust like I'm the bones-eating giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Like health shift-work. A lack of moderation followed by a hardcore lack of moderation!

everything's gonna be fine fine fine 

But back to my birthday: if you're wondering to yourself, "what can I do to make more delightful the birthday of my favourite food blogger- nay, my favourite writer altogether" -  well! My paypal is always open (it's my email address - laura@hungryandfrozen.com) and any donations big, enormous or small would be majorly gratefully received by ya perpetually bank-account-challenged gal. For free you could spend the day in quiet, solemn reflection on how great I am on twitter, or...you could carry on with your day because I hear a horrifying rumour that I'm not the only person on earth to have a birthday and everything doesn't stop on Sunday just because I do. It's chill, I'll be over here serenely glowing with omegas and the power of a thousand glasses of green tea and being myself and seeing what comes of it.
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title from: Alanis Morrisette and her laconically powerful and kinda deeply meaningful song One Hand In My Pocket, from the iconic Jagged Little Pill album. I saw her in concert in 1996! What! Ladies be aging! 
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music lately: 

Boy Problems by Carly Rae Jepsen. Her E-mo-tion album is SO important and this video is so important and her haircut in it is frankly very important and it's all just very, very good.

The Kills, Sour Cherry. I've been watching a lot of Gossip Girl, and this song is on the soundtrack. I love how both this show and this band's main aesthetic is "bratty". I'm feeling very influenced by it, nearly ten years after the show actually screened.
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next time: I made a massive three layer creme egg cake for a friend's gf's 21st birthday and was thinking about blogging about it just because, otherwise I made this mayo from scratch with matcha in it and it was amazing, so on the very other end of the scale, there's also that. 

6 April 2016

everyone is waiting, waiting on you and you've got thyme

A Season For Peaches, a novel by Henri Michel

In case you are all, "damn that Laura is the epitome of perfection I really love what she does I just wish she'd sometimes display some kind of minor flaw to humanise her more" - and I have zero reason to believe this isn't what people are thinking all the time - then have I got a relatable and relatively dull anecdote for you about how I made a terrible dinner.

On Monday I was exceptionally tired and not really thinking and as a result, I made the most aggressively bland, horrible pasta of my life, and the more I tried to fix it the worse it got. I started off wanting to make some kind of dairy-free cauliflower sauce, where you puree an entire head of cooked cauliflower and it turns out all creamy and delicious. Why? Honestly, I don't know, but I've been reading too much pinterest but also if I can effortlessly conjure up a dope vegan pasta bake then that's a pleasing outcome. However it turned into the equivalent of mashed potato and refused to puree and also tasted of absolutely nothing so in a panicked state I ... upended an entire bottle of cream into it. It still wouldn't liquefy, so with mounting panic I mixed this mashed potato-esque stuff into cooked rigatoni along with some eggplant I'd roasted, so it was like...this weird billowy mass studded with the occasional piece of eggplant. How did I think this was going to turn into an awesome pasta bake? I topped it with parsley. That made it even less good. I shoved it in the oven to grill, which, as there was nothing in it to melt, just made it more warm and didn't change it miraculously on the cellular level that I'd been hoping for. 


It might sound "insufferable" or like "not a real problem" or "good god shut up Laura" but like I said, I was super tired and making dinner is a thing I'm always good at when all else crumbles around me and honestly, just the waste of money and ingredients was incredibly disheartening. However, I did manage to avoid panic-eating the lot, and dealt with it by going for a nap and searching youtube for ASMR videos specifically featuring someone telling you repeatedly in a very gentle voice that you're actually a good cook. (A later cursory prod of the abandoned pasta bake revealed that it had not improved with time but I made myself eat some anyway, because I was both hungry and miserably stubborn about the aforementioned waste of money and ingredients.)

This is all completely unimportant and not terribly interesting, it's just every time I do something stupid I feel pathologically compelled to tell the entire internet about it. An incident of totally sucking shared is an incident of totally sucking halved, I say.

Having since made a few things that mercifully turned out deliciously, I am safely back in the mindset that I love cooking and it loves me. For example, these honey and thyme roasted peaches. I went to brunch at Flight Coffee Hangar with one of my dearest friends Charlotte for her birthday and had brioche covered in vanilla mascarpone and said peaches. (It's one of those places where the menu is so good that it's actually inconvenient, because I can never choose what to get.) I was so taken with my brunch that I bought peaches on the way home and immediately tried to recreate what they'd done.


I don't know how similar my method is to what the cafe does, but it worked incredibly well for me. Before you even get to taste them, the slowly roasting peaches fill your house with their heady perfume, so rich and intoxicating that you want to float through the air with hearts for eyes like some kind of amorous cartoon animal from a bygone era. 

There's something oddly lovely and lazily sensual about drizzling sticky, slow-moving honey over soft freshly cut peaches before scattering them with fragrant herbs, like you have no cares in the world apart from getting weirdly skittish over ripe stone fruit. 

Cooked, they have this floral depth of sweetness from the slick of honey and the caramelising heat of the oven, and the smoky herbal thyme cuts through this and makes it more than just merely sugary. With very little effort suddenly you have yourself this gorgeous quantity of fruit that you can tuck around scoops of ice cream, stir through muesli, arrange on top of a cake, or indeed, add to toasted brioche with mascarpone as they did at the cafe. 

honey thyme roasted peaches

a recipe by myself, but inspired directly by my brunch at Flight Coffee Hangar

four large ripe peaches
two teaspoons runny honey
one teaspoon olive oil - I guess you could leave it out but I feel it adds some fruity richness and will put a shine on your coat
several sprigs of fresh thyme

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Roughly slice the peaches into quarters or thirds or whatever and lay them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Drizzle over the honey and the olive oil, then scatter over most of the thyme leaves, and just throw the remaining sprigs on top. 

Roast for twenty minutes, then turn the oven off and leave the peaches in there while it cools, for about an hour.  Use how you please, and throw any remainders into a jar and keep in the fridge. 


That afternoon, 100% not sick of peaches yet, I ate them with Nigella's miso ice cream that I'd made a variation on (by adding shredded coconut and white chocolate) and it was an incredible combination, the kind of thing that makes you feel so incredibly grown up that you end up going full circle and feeling childish again because you feel so grown up; then this morning I added them to some intensely healthy chia seed muesli to which they brought depth and sweetness. I still have half a jar left, I may just eat them straight from it with a fork but I like the idea of deploying them savoury-ly, perhaps in some tagine-type dish or to accompany crispy, slow-cooked pork belly. What I'm saying is, you will not regret making these. If you avoid honey for whatever reason, I do believe maple syrup would be an excellent substitution; if you don't like thyme then that's a little harder as it's not as though you could successfully use, like, parsley instead - I'd just leave it out altogether. I adore thyme though and am pretty much forever trying to work it into everything I cook.



Because my friend Charlotte and I are practically twins (that is, we're very similar personality-wise and we were born only a handful of days apart, one can only dream of having a face as beautiful as hers) her birthday happening means that mine is getting super close. I'm feeling more chill about it than I was a few blog posts ago, I mean...it's going to happen. It just is. Also I remembered that you get presents and lots of attention, both things that I adore, and I'm frankly curious to see what thirty-year-old me is like. It will possibly involve singing Grown Woman by Beyonce with increasing desperation, but who knows!
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title from: You've Got Time, the stunning Orange is the New Black theme song by Regina Spektor. We have this cocktail at work that has thyme in it and whenever someone orders it I always get this song in my head, I figured I might as well pass on this gift and curse to you too. 
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music lately: 

Sevendust featuring Skin, Licking Cream. Some nu-metal is oddly timeless, okay? This song is so exhilarating and big and soaring and happy? And honestly it's impossible to tell who is hotter out of Skin or the Sevendust lead singer LaJon Witherspoon (when Skin sings "crawling down your spine" I'm pretty sure she wins but it's not actually a competition and I'm just incredibly glad they collaborated on this amazing song.)

Chelsea Jade, Low Brow. This stellar human who I am proud to call a pal has released this gloriously dreamy new tune with a video that's both beautiful and beautifully silly. "Just hold me closer than you know how to" - ugh it's so good.
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next time: I may well have to make some kind of elaborate pasta bake again to exorcise the demons of the last failed one. Will make sure I've slept enough this time.