PAIN D’ÉPICES - FRENCH SPICED LOAF CAKE

You may think this is quite a sad-looking plain loaf cake but you may think again. I am known for getting over-excited about cake but this, ladies and gentlemen, this is my new favourite cake in the uuuuniverse (after Stereo's upside-down orange cake maybe, but I'm going back for more of that later on). I used to have pain d'épices all the time back in Italy and then found some when I popped down to Paris last summer, and was getting slightly upset about the lack of it here in good (?) old Blightey. Well last week I thought I'd assemble all my troops and go get some nice spices to make it myself. You should too. It's like a moist sticky spice party in cake-form and actually healthy (no fats or anything) and it has the best unusual spongy texture ever because of the flour combination. Plus if you too have a lonely pack of rye flour lying in your kitchen cupboard and you're moving to God knows where in six months, then there you go, vegan pain d'épices saves the day. 

BOOZY WALNUT COOKIES

After a week featuring frozen feet, bus strikes, blocked bank cards, office thieves, explosive pots of yoghurt, and the universe generally not allowing you to lead the life of a princess (!), who ever thought that watching a marathon of films about working-class families struggling during the recession in London in the 1980’s wouldn’t improve the situation.

Good job there’s cookies. Good job it’s boozy vegan cookies.

CANDIED MINT LEAVES

Organising jail breaks to the North and eating cake for dinner and coating fifteen million mint leaves in icing sugar using a pastry brush. Sometimes life is totally worth living (at least for a while).

LEMON POPPY SEED ROLL

To moving to Shimokitazawa to learn Japanese, going to pastry school in New York and running away to Scotland and starting a pop band I can now add selling vegan poppy seed rolls in Hungary or another Eastern European country of choice to my list of career options for when I grow up (errr).

CRANACHAN - SCOTTISH DESSERT

Strolling along the Clyde and finding cheap warm jumpers and cheap everything and the Necropolis covered in snow and flowers and plants and funny currencies and techno clubs and seriously fishy birthdays and the best food you can possibly imagine, and you kind of forget that it’s minus eight degrees and that you could die at any moment slipping on the icy streets and you can’t really understand what anyone says (although you still want to hug them and never let them go), Glasgow you’re pure dead brilliant and I salute you with some very Scottish vegan Cranachan. 
You shall see me again.

BISCOFF TIRAMISÙ

Feeding the Dalston homeless with slabs of vegan tiramisù since 2015. Hah

PEANUT BUTTER MUFFINS

My detox diet after the enormous quantities of sugar-coated poison I ingurgitated during the holidays was going really well until PEANUT BUTTER MUFFINS.