Tea and Sympatico

A few weeks ago I had one of those wonderful baking experiences where you just throw together what you have in your cupboards/ fridge and it comes together perfectly. This included a courgette that needed using up and a bottle of date syrup that I'd bought a while back on a whim but then not been sure what to use it for. Although Chocolate, Courgette sugar free muffins may sound quite worthy I can assure you that they tasted anything but. The date syrup added rich toffee flavours and the coconut oil a fabulous butteriness. Quite simply these were some of the fluffiest, tastiest muffins I've ever made and I've made a lot of vegan muffins in the last 9 years! I'm really glad that I took time to write the recipe down as I will definitely be making these again. Chocolate and Courgette Muffins Makes 10 Ingredients 5oz/ 125g of plain flour 2oz/ 50g of cocoa 1 teaspoon of baking powder 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon 1 teaspoon of vani

I've been enjoying cooking with stout and chocolate recently as they are such a great flavour combination. I blogged about making this ice cream back in January.  The recipe for the Vegan Chocolate Stout ice cream is from a blog called the Beeroness and I highly recommend it if you like these kind of flavours. I followed the recipe in full this time and added the toasted coconut which gave an extra dimension. I don't have an ice cream maker but the beauty of this recipe is that you don't need one and the texture is spot on. I'd also recommend Sainsbury's Coconut Milk as all the tins I've bought recently have been more like a thick coconut cream than milk and therefore perfect for ice cream making. The cake in the picture was another great recipe discovery which I found through Googling. It's this recipe from the Culinary Orgasm blog. Interestingly neither this blogger or the Beeroness are actually vegans but they have written fantastic vegan friendl