Chocolate orange sweet potato pudding (optionally for Halloween)

All over the blogosphere, Halloween recipes are being shared showing cute treats and spooky meals. I had notions of joining in with some sweet potato witches, decorated with raisins and chocolate sauce. Alas, my creative talents were clearly not up to the task and I post the image below for your amusement only. I can't recommend the product as something worthy of sharing with anyone other than yourself!

A slight fail...

Given the messiness of my so-called witches, I turned them into a pudding instead. This worked just fine although no longer looks particularly Halloween like. It is, however, enjoyable to eat. I'm going to claim that is the main thing, especially as I associate Halloween with the US and I am not American!

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Peanut butter chocolate avocado pudding

I think the chocolate-avocado combination has become a well-known classic. I've enjoyed it in pudding, mousse and cheesecake-style desserts before. Today's post is a variation on the theme but adds the additional classic mix of chocolate and peanut butter. Using peanut butter powder helps to avoid a too thick dessert (peanut butter and avocado both being rather dense) but you could use traditional peanut butter and thin the mix out with additional almond milk if needed.

 

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Carrot cake ice cream (the simple version)

In January 2014, I shared a recipe for carrot cake pudding or ice cream. I still love that recipe and highly recommend it to you. It features carrots (of course!), frozen banana and canned coconut milk, as well as optional but recommended maple syrup, vanilla, spices and desiccated coconut.

Today's recipe is similar but slightly streamlined. It's entirely appropriate for breakfast and, if you're like me, you'll always have the ingredients on hand (I don't always have coconut milk). Adding raisins to the carrots and bananas gave plenty of sweetness without extra syrup, and really boosted the carrot cake profile. Basically, I love this version too. I wanted to share it with you and record it for my future reference!

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Raw vegan lime pots for 5 years of blogging

Mr Bite and I have just returned from 4 nights in the Forest of Dean, staying in a cabin in the woods and enjoying a perfect mix of outdoor walks, indoor reading, beautiful scenery, and hot tub soaking. It was a gorgeous week and I look forward to sharing photos soon.

For now, though, I am sharing these raw lime desserts in honour of Bite-Sized Thoughts turning 5. I am not entirely sure how I got to 5 years of blogging, but remain grateful to have it in my life. That gratitude is about having a forum to summarise my recipes and reflect on my experiences, but also the broader blogging community and the inspiration I get from others' sites.

At the same time, after 5 years, I think it is understandable that my blogging frequency has slowed down a little. I posted 142 times in 2015, compared to around 180 posts in each of 2012, 2013 and 2014. This year I have been even more open-minded about how often I post. For the time being, that feels right.

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Coconut flour raspberry and apple crumble

It is crumble season. Also pie season and pudding season, but today we're talking crumble. A simple, fruity, comforting crumble with the sweet tartness of raspberries and the tart sweetness of apples.

My crumbles are more fruit than topping, but the topping here is excellent too (even if I scorched mine a little bit). I used coconut sugar and coconut flour, which gave a slightly different texture and taste to standard sugar/flour combinations. I think coconut flour is particularly suited to crumble toppings because it is inherently quite crumbly. It also has a texture that is somehow light and fluffy but also rich and comforting. I liked it in this dish.

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Green tropical pudding

I would apologise for posting near consecutive tropical recipes, but it was 21'C (70'F) in London today. It will be 25'C tomorrow. I think that deserves tropical, given average spring temperatures are more like 14'C.

This recipe uses the mangoes that remained from my recent bulk buy purchase, and in many ways it is a pudding version of the cake I posted last week. I liked the cake more, but this is easier to make - and you can eat it for breakfast. Like the cake, it has a simple, whole food ingredient list. The green colour comes (unsurprisingly) from avocado and that also lends a creamy texture. Banana, pineapple and coconut round out the ingredient list.

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Raw apple cheesecake puddings {London marathon fundraising}

Another Thursday and another fundraising recipe! This one is firmly in the dessert category, although I think these puddings could almost double up as breakfast. The ingredients are raw, vegan and entirely natural, even if the end result is rather decadent.

Raw apple cheesecake puddings

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have noticed that I've been rather obsessed with cashews. It's funny how tastes wax and wane over time. For the last two weeks, I have eaten more cashews than I would usually do in months. You see, I didn't use to like them much plain. With this turn around, there may be hope for me and avocados yet!

Given the cashew obsession, it isn't surprising that today's dessert is made with the nuts. However, don't worry if you aren't as fond of cashews as I currently am. They provide healthy creaminess but don't actually influence the pudding's flavour. That is firmly apple, with hints of maple syrup and vanilla. The final result is reminiscent of cheesecake without being exactly like it, which is why I have called these cheesecake puddings. They are a little softer than traditional cheesecake, and not as rich or as tart. They are, however, delicious.

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Vegan sticky banana pudding

The next time you have some over-ripe bananas to use up, may I suggest this pudding as an alternative to banana bread or banana muffins? It will take you from 'healthy snack' to 'decadent dessert', but I don't think you'll regret the shift.

Better suited to the northern hemisphere autumn than approaching southern summer, this is effectively sticky toffee pudding with banana. It is sticky, and comforting, and very sweet.

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High protein banana cinnamon pudding

As some of you gathered from my Facebook page, I was waylaid by illness this week. It has been a while since I've been really sick, and whilst this was short lived, it was sufficient to wipe me out for a while.

Fortunately I am feeling much better now, and am pleased to share this easy recipe I made a few weeks ago.

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Carrot cake pudding, or carrot cake ice cream (raw and vegan)

I am really very (very!) excited about this recipe. I know we're only 22 days into 2014, but right now, this is looking like a good contender for recipe of the year.

Carrot cake pudding

Why the excitement? This pudding or ice cream (it can be served either way) tastes amazingly decadent, has just three core ingredients, and packs a serve of fruit and vegetable in every bowl. It's an impressive set of credentials for a snack or dessert that takes 5 minutes to prepare.

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Magical everything chocolate pudding (vegan, raw, 100% whole foods, and refined sugar free)

I like to think that I'm honest about my vegetable dessert experiments that don't quite work. The green ice cream I made with spinach? Probably not for everyone. That (best forgotten) chocolate mint fudge with cauliflower? Clearly a disaster.

As for this chocolate pudding, though? Trust me when I say it's a vegetable containing dessert that you want to embrace.

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Books, and a chocolate-banana-spinach-cherry-smoothie-pudding

I realised that it's been a little while since I've mentioned books in a post. So long, in fact, that I can't quite recall when it last was. Thus, I thought I'd give a brief mention to those that I've read in the past 2 months;

• The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, by Lauren Liebenberg (Is this not one of the best book titles you can imagine? Sadly the book didn't quite match the name, but it was still a worthwhile read.)
• Cage of Stars, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
• My Childhood, by Maxim Gorky
• The Coroner, by M. R. Hall
• Disappeared, by M. R. Hall

Details can be found here for those interested, but I wanted to pause on The Coroner for a moment. I probably wouldn't have picked this book up if left to my own devices (Mr Bite's Mum lent it to me), given that I don't usually gravitate towards crime-detective fiction, but it was wonderful. This was partially due to the writing and story (more detective than crime) and partially due to the considerable psychology component in the tale. Consider the following:

"Shutting the door at the end of the day was something she'd worked on with Dr Travis. He'd told her that, in common with so many women, she was a perfectionist who couldn't rest until everything around her was in order. When work was a daily round of chaos, loose ends and uncertainties, it was only a matter of time before a personality like hers would collapse under the pressure." (p. 49, The Coroner).


I love this quote. In part because the attention to anxiety and panic and personality served to enhance the story, in a way I hadn't been expecting, and in part because this quote could describe me. And, I'm sure, many other women (and no doubt men).

You see, I have a terrible tendency to feel overwhelmingly overwhelmed when my To Do list gets too long or seems unmanageable. The 'terrible' part of this is that it very rarely is too long - I get through it. I can't count the number of anxious Sunday nights I've had, waking up frequently to worry about what I have to do on the Monday, and then invariably I get through all the urgent tasks by lunchtime. 3pm at the latest. To my amusement, though, it's never occurred to me to metaphorically "shut the door" on this To Do list, rather than think about how I'm going to tackle it and make sure things are tidied up and ticked off.

So consider this my philosophical contribution to your week: shut the door on work when at home (if you don't already do so). Easier said than done but I shall certainly be giving it a go tonight.

Putting serious things aside, I also have a smoothie recipe today. Recipe is slightly grandiose as it is hardly a novel combination of ingredients, but I found the thickness to be almost pudding like. I very much like that it could go in both straw-drinking and spoon-eating categories.

Chocolate Banana Spinach Cherry Smoothie Pudding

Serves 1 (this is more of a pudding-sized serve - see notes below to make it a larger smoothie)

1 medium frozen banana

1 generous handful baby spinach leaves

~100ml non-dairy chocolate milk, or plain milk + 1tsp cocoa

(I used chocolate hazelnut milk and didn't actually measure - approximately 100ml)

8 frozen cherries + 4 to garnish

Blend all ingredients in a blender or food processor

Add extra milk if you would like it more smoothie-like, or protein powder or chia seeds if you would like it thicker

Serve with 4 extra frozen cherries on top

Cold chocolatey, banana-y, cherried deliciousness. The hidden spinach is a bonus!

How do you like your smoothies - spoon or straw?

And what are you like at "shutting the door" on work?

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