APRICOT SANDWICH CAKE

When you find yourself sliding more or less gracefully along a path consisting of new flats, new working-week catastrophes, new friends and new definitely-not-friends, new routes home through the park (or around it, when it’s dark), new and annoyingly smaller Clippers, new (?) bastions of human progress that go under the name of gift cards, new accents, new motion graphics teachers at the University of Life (please, if that’s ok), new pens and candle holders, and new perspectives on what is real and what is not; when all this happens, you have to stop for a minute and take time to celebrate an old ally. Who, in fact, today gets even older (but we don’t mind because we like him greatly). With a double-decker apricot cake all frosted up and covered in dinosaur sprinkles and popping candy, because that's how we roll. Haaappaay Birthday Adam.

RAW SACHERTORTE

You may have noticed that I’ve been completely ignoring Muffin Sunday for two entire weeks. I know I’m being very ungrateful towards muffins, but the truth is, I have two very embraceable reasons for this lack of muffin-making. The first is, I got myself a blender! Haha. Sorry. But I did. So I had to make something using it this week. Period. The second is, this is Sachertorte! The most delicious cake on the face of the earth, in my very valuable opinion. We used to get this from the bakery every year for my dad’s birthday and I think it’s been at least two or three years since the last time I was home for one (sadness creeping in). How can you not miss this chocolaty and jammy moist deliciousness. Anyway, I thought, it’s (British) Father’s Day today so it makes a bit of sense to make Sachertorte. It’s like I’m at home for my dad’s birthday, except I’m not at home and it’s not my dad’s birthday. Ha. Anyway, let me get to the blender part. As I bought myself a blender (I need to stop this, I know), I can now grind almonds and cashews and all sorts of stuff, which makes it so much easier to make raw desserts. So I thought I’d make my own version of Sacher: vegan, gluten-free and 100% raw. And also kind of 100% blended. I don’t want to give too much away but I had a quarter of this cake in one go whilst taking pictures of it, it’s that good (camera covered in chocolate). I’m considering to start selling it under the label “I can’t believe it’s not Sacher”. I’ll let you know how it goes.

APRICOT & GOJI BERRY PUFFED RICE BARS

These could be considered a fancy version of kitchen-sink bars. After a disastrous attempt at making vegan white chocolate cookies with a veeery watery fake white chocolate bar the other night, I ran out of flour, oil and pretty much everything you need to bake something edible. However, upon inspecting the kitchen cupboard looking for treats yesterday evening after work (I did find treats by the way. And consequently ate the treats. A lot of them. BAD), I also discovered a sad-looking pack of puffed rice lying there at the back, together with two little bags of equally sad-looking dried apricots. I also had a pack of goji berries, and I actually had been looking for some nice recipe to use them in. Add an opened jar of peanut butter and ta-daah. Mission accomplished. No more abandoned puffed rice. No more forgotten dried apricots. This has cleared some space in my cupboard (and officially allows me to refill it asap), and after throwing everything in a pan (everything but the kitchen sink, as they say), has brought to life some lovely, quite healthy puffed rice bars, which are also vegan and gluten free. I can’t really complain, can I! Should you want to experiment with these bars yourselves, feel free to throw in whatever you have in your cupboard (yeh ok, within reason): dried fruit/nuts of any kind all work a treat (!) here.