Easter Baking : Raspberry Chocolate Chip Plant-Based Cookies

Every bank holiday, or long weekend we like to do a spot of baking. Especially getting up early as we like to both celebrate that it’s holiday (wahey!), and finally we have time to try out some of the recipes that have been earmarked for a while. This moorish recipe we came across is from Deliciously Ella, a plant-based recipe that is super delicious. We have altered the recipe as we love the combination of sea salt and dark chocolate, and a more chocolatey frosting.

Last Easter, our DIY craft was based on eggs, faux chocolate Easter eggs, hee hee. This Easter, let’s have some real chocolate! During this time of the year we definitely would have chocolate (quite a lot!) lying around.

Nothing beats a warm chocolate cookie! Yum!

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Chip Plant-Based Cookie Recipe

(Adapted from Deliciously Ella)

Ingredients:

Cookie Recipe

200g Almond Flour

100ml maple syrup

4 tablespoons of brown rice flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 tablespoon of coconut oil, melted

1 pinch of sea salt

100g dark chocolate broken into shards ( 70% dark chocolate)*

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Frosting Recipe

125g fresh raspberries

100g dark chocolate ( 70% dark chocolate )*

1 tablespoon maple syrup

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degree fan

2. Put all the ingredients into a blender (except dark chocolate chips) and pulse until all the ingredients are combined. Add in the broken chocolate shards and pulse until everything is mixed well. If you’d prefer finer more even chocolate chips, chop them up before hand, however, we like uneven bits of large chocolate chips. We just broke up the chocolate into different shapes.

3. Empty contents from blender and using a tablespoon to scoop out a spoonful of mixture and roll them into balls. Flatten them on the baking tray with your thumbs.

4. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes until golden and brown.

5. Meanwhile whilst the cookies are cooling, add the raspberry frosting ingredients into a pan. Using medium low heat melt everything, crushing the raspberries. Once the chocolate has melted, using a hand blender, whizz up the sauce. Drizzle the sauce over the chocolate.

6. Indulge the warm cookie! We love it with a cup of coffee! Or top it with a scoop of nice cream “plant-based ice-cream” or any ice-cream you have for a lovely treat.

*It’s a really good way to use up any chocolate you have lying around after Easter! Easy recipe to make with children.

Happy baking! Most importantly, happy devouring!

A Dancing Silly Sausage Illustration

The weather is going bonkers. Barbecue smells in February. Our silly sausage has decided to do a dance.

P.S. According to research by The Independent, the British loves talking about the weather. The average British person will spend four and half months of their life talking about weather.

Hungry for Mondrian Bento Box

We love bento boxes - a lunch box filled with normally the freshest combination of ingredients of the day to create the most scrummy meal. Normally it will include a combination of savoury dishes and a small dessert together within the lunch box.

Here, we are absolutely hungry for this bento box created by Yum Tang, a visual designer / food photographer in Beijing, China. As part of her collaboration with the IBM Thinkpad laptop, she has created a colour rich quirky and fun Mondrian colour Bento lunch box to be displayed onto the laptop.

The Mondrian bento box contains ingredients from that are vibrant in colours, from bright red watermelon, coral orange salmon to contrasting white noodles and rice along with some purple sweet potatoes all neatly lined up in a mondrian styled square and rectangle shaped cubicles within the lunch box.

Based on the shapes of the ingredients in the Bento box, we love how Yum has utilised the shapes and colours of the ingredients and translated them to digital prints.

We are so hungry for it both in colour and taste.

Afternoon Tea Set For Paper Lovers

We love all things paper. Especially paper sculptures that are made into relatable fun items that brings back wonderful memories. Self taught Australian paper engineer Benja Harney of studio Paperform specialises in making everything (really everything!) fun and super cool with paper for their commercial clients. We LOVE how Benja will refer to people visiting his website as Paper Nerds! Yes, here!

This paper set of a classic afternoon tea set encapsulates all the favourite things we love about the British tradition of an afternoon tea. Those cucumber sandwiches, that perforated serviette, those fine paper bone china and cute delicious slices of pastel cakes… YUM!

Edible Chocolate Stationery Box

This chocolate box has to be the most stationery nutrient dense gift for stationery lovers. Chocolate crayons, chocolate fountain pen, chocolate mechanical pencil, chocolate pencil sharpener, chocolate scissors…chocolate stationery dreams for the chocolate loving stationery lover.

Super amaze balls chocolate stationery box from Choc On Choc.

How To Make Sweetheart Candy Hearts

We love sweetheart candies. The iconic love heart candies with super sweet lovey dovey messages printed on pastel colour shades sweets. We love them so much we’ve created a pencil set inspired by them. With this Candy Heart Generator, you can create your own range of sweetheart candies with your own terms of endearment. Type in your own message, pick a candy heart shade, download the digital version of your treat, and add them to your emails, WhatsApp or text messages and send your own version of these sweets to your loved ones. Our personalised ones would definitely have to include pencils, just because. Totes dentists approved!

P.S. This February 14th, Valentine’s day, there will be a lack of these classic American sweetheart candies. This over 153 year old sweetie, founded since 1866 by US sweet company NECCO is currently under a change of hands of the company. Hence digital versions of these classic conversation heart sweeties are perfect for your sweet nothings. For the British, we have the LOVE HEARTS by sweet company Swizzels - sweet!

Vitamin C for Cute Citrus

These two pieces of homeware that are designed for oranges will make anyone go fruit envy. We are completely goo goo ga ga over these cute faces. Citrus fruits can’t get any more fun with these two orange gadgets around.

The orange basket holder on the left, is an orange fruit holder, “Kantan Reito Mikan Holder“ the most kawaii fruit accessory designed for Japanese oranges- the Mikan fruit, which is like easy peelers satsumas. It is for making frozen orange iced desserts. We think it is perfectly cool to carry our citrus fruits in this holder along with our lunch boxes.

The cute gadget on the right is also designed for the Mikan oranges - an orange juicer. Totes adorbs!

Who says fruits can’t be fun? In our books, Vitamin C is for Cute!

Edible Chocolate Crayons

A drawing kit where the paper and crayons are both edible is a dream come true. Yummy.

Brought to you by Shanghai based design studio Rong in collaboration with chocolate brand Ameno. Simply genius.

Flavours (or colours) include dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, strawberry chocolate, and matcha chocolate.