Checking in, recent meals out and a vegan vanilla caramel butterfly cake

Well, hello. It is odd to log onto Blogger after nearly 2 months away. I confess that I haven't missed the act of blogging but I have missed the outlet for sharing food-related news and for connecting with regular readers. I hope you are all well.

I have been less active than I expected in reading blogs too. I opened Inoreader this week with a little apprehension - how much would have built up? - but found it freeing to look at 2 months of others' activity and know I could pick and choose what to read and what to comment on. It was a lovely surprise to see Johanna's reflection on blogging as part of my catch up. Her post captures many of my views and it summarises how blogging has changed and time can feel stretched for all of us.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London

I think and hope I may be in a position to return to posting a little more often, but will make no promises in this post. I am pleased, however, to announce one update: Bite-sized thoughts is now on Instagram (@bitesizedthoughtsuk). I resisted Instagram for a long time because I thought it would be another thing to monitor and manage, but I like that I can share snapshots of products and meals when I wouldn't manage a full post. If you're on Instagram, let me know and I will look you up.

For now, I am pleased to share some highlights from the last 2 months.

Mini Bite in action

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Vegan pumpkin spice cake

Last week was my birthday, and birthdays are always a good excuse for cake. For home consumption I made the hummingbird cake I've posted twice before, which was just as good on this occasion as on occasions past. I also made a pumpkin spice cake to take to work, using the rest of the tin of pumpkin I recently bought.

Mr Bite doesn't like pumpkin, which is a shame, because I'd love to enter this cake into regular rotation. It was truly delicious. Three colleagues asked for the recipe, and whilst pumpkin preparation is annoying if you don't have the tinned variety to hand, I can attest it would be worth it here.

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Vegan chocolate cranberry layer cake with a cranberry ganache icing

Last weekend was my birthday and therefore a good opportunity for cake experimentation. It is helpful when the only person you'll let down with a baking failure is yourself; it frees one up to try something new and not worry too much about what may go wrong. In my case, the 'new' was this chocolate cranberry layer cake with a cranberry ganache icing.

I surprised myself by choosing a chocolate cake, as I think of my cake tastes as more aligned with fruit and vanilla. Not this year! In saying that, there was a definite fruit component to this cake and (I think) the cranberries made it more exciting than your typical chocolate cake.

I adapted the cake from a chocolate cranberry cake on Brave Tart, which wasn't vegan but did provide gluten-free options. My cake contained gluten but omitted the eggs and used dairy substitutes. It was dense and decadent whilst also being fluffy, and chocolatey without being overpowering. The cranberries within the cake were subtle and those in the icing allowed for a tart edge that balanced the usual sweetness of ganache.

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Mr Bite's birthday, and a veganised chocolate mud cake

Last week was distinguished by Mr Bite's birthday. To celebrate, we had his usual dense chocolate mud cake. This year, though, his usual cake underwent a few adaptations to make it vegan. This wasn't Mr Bite's request (although he kindly let me experiment), but stemmed from the lack of family members to help us eat birthday cake and my recent discovery of vegan soy cream. I thought the cream would work in the ganache icing, and the other non-vegan ingredients were easily tackled using standard ingredient swaps. 

I relied on Mr Bite's comments to compare this version to the non-vegan ones of recent years. He said that it tasted the same, but also that this one was fudgier - denser and less fluffy. This may stem from my use of egg replacer instead of eggs, or my UK oven being different to my Australian one. It may also have something to do with me halving the ingredients to make a smaller cake. Regardless, it was still pronounced good, and having enjoyed some slices myself, I can say it is definitely fudgy and mud cake-like.

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Raspberry and yoghurt loaf, for a birthday

Those of you involved in research may empathise when I say that I spent all of today (or at least a good 8 hours of it) working on a grant application. The good news is that it is now largely done, or at least done as a complete draft. The other good news is that my life has had plenty of distractions from out-of-hours work. It was my birthday last week, and birthdays do make for nice distractions.

Mr Bite excelled at making this one particularly nice. I got sparkly flowers, above, a voucher to unleash myself at Whole Foods or Planet Organic (dangerous!), a dinner promise for 222 Veggie Vegan (exciting!), a new memory card (essential, with the number of photos I take), an amazingly enormous guide to touring Britain, and ticket to the ballet, The Nutcracker. 

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Vegan strawberry layer cake

My birthday celebrations have been persisting beyond what, strictly speaking, might be appropriate. There have been a few casual catch ups with friends that unexpectedly generated birthday cards and even presents. There was the phlebotomist that noted my birth date as she drew blood. And, last Saturday, there was another family birthday celebration, this time with Mr Bite's family. One of my nieces has a birthday near mine, so we tend to combine celebrations somewhere between our two birthdays.

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Celebrations and food

Can you believe that it's been a year since my sister's cupcake-filled 21st birthday? No, me neither.

Somehow, though, it is.

This year, my sister's birthday fell the day before her last university exam. Not her last exam for this semester, or even last exam for this year, but the very last exam for her degree. She is officially (or unofficially, I suppose, seeing as exams need to be marked) finished with university - at least for the time being. We celebrated her birthday a day late, and it felt like an occasion for lots of celebration.

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Happy Birthday Mr Bite

When you're young, your own birthday is really the only one that matters. With age, getting older becomes that bit less exciting, and being the centre of attention becomes that bit less appealing. Given I have never really liked being the centre of attention, we're now at the point where I'd like to reduce the scale of my birthday to, say, a 1 on a scale of 0 to 10.

In contrast to the above, I have found my excitement about other people's birthdays to increase in my adult years. Heaping extra attention and enthusiasm on people I care about? Yes, please.

I need to work on my icing lettering skills
(even aside from the name adjustment on the bottom line!)

Yesterday was Mr Bite's birthday, and I was very excited for it. Like last year, he wanted pizza with family and the exact same chocolate mudcake I have made for three years now. Unlike last year, his birthday fell on a Monday, which meant we separated out his family celebrations from his actual birthday day.

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