A Carrot Cake Bake Off

I get a little bit over excited sometimes and want to make everything in sight. This happened to me this week when I wanted to make a carrot cake. My head was in tatters. There were so many options and not enough people to feed excess cakes supplies to. I haven't got a 'go to' carrot cake recipe and after looking through my books I came across far too many to choose from. I mean really, how am I supposed to know which one is best if I don't make them all? What if there's a better one out there that I don't know about? Well, in my (slightly crazy) mind there was only one thing for it...yup I made them all.

I'm not crazy enough to make them all full sized so I narrowed it down to three recipes and made a three layer cake with each layer being a different carrot cake recipe. All of them used three eggs so I could just use one egg for each recipe and divide everything else accordingly. Super simple. This is definitely the way to go if you want to try out lots of recipe to find the best one.

Chorizo, Chickpea & Bean Stew

We've been stuck in a food rut. And yes, whilst eating meat, potato and veg in it's various guises is always good, enough was enough. We weren't quite ready to dust off the salad servers but with a whole two days of almost springlike weather our senses were awakened and we were craving new flavours. Goodness was needed and lots of it, something less heavy and definitely no stodge! A kind of transitional meal to awaken us from the depths of winter and get us ready for spring.

And oh by jove, this soupy stew ticked all the right boxes. Delicious Spanish chorizo mixed with vegetables and beans with a bit of a kick. How could you not feel good after that? It's still warming and comforting so I wouldn't exactly call it light but it sure hit the spot. It's a great value little dish but if I can say one thing it would be to buy the best quality chorizo that you can afford. It really will make the dish.

Cheese & Pickle Burgers

Cheese & Pickle makes for a pretty formidable partnership. Fact. 
The two just kinda go hand in hand don't they?

Sometimes, living in a foreign country, you get a bit homesick and you just want to eat food that reminds you of home. Nothing fancy, just something takes you back for a moment and for me that something is cheese and pickle. What could be more British and comforting than that? And not fancy schmancy pickle. Oh no, I'm talking about the good old Branston variety. And imagine how excited I was when I found some in one of the supermarkets here! OK, so it was a 10 mile round trip on my bike to get my hands on it but I'd say that it was a small price to pay to have the pickle in my life once again. And after all that exercise I definitely had to do something awesome with it.

No-Bake Chocolate Tart and a Rescue Mission

I learned some lessons this week...

lesson one...don't use your beautiful homemade butter biscuits as the biscuit base for your chocolate tart. Why? Well this is what happens...it's not looking good is it? 

I guess all the butter in the biscuits combined with the butter I used to bind the crumbs was a bit too much. As you can see, what I ended up with was a sorry mess of crumbs swimming in a sea of butter. And so rescue mission number one began and back to the shops it was for some old faithful digestives and another block of butter.