Hummingbird Chocolate Cupcakes

You know, sometimes you just want a cupcake. And nothing makes my day more than realizing that I have all the ingredients for the item I'm craving already in my pantry. Brilliant! This recipe was super easy - the most time consuming bit of the prep is literally just measuring out your ingredients, which takes all of three minutes. If you're in the mood for a tasty cupcake that isn't oppressively sweet, then this is the recipe for you. 

I'd seen this recipe on the Good Food website as well but wanted to give the credit to Hummingbird via Tesco because Good Food sneakily neglected to give any credit to the Hummingbird Bakery! Naughty, naughty. The following recipe hasn't been altered at all because there wasn't anything I'd do differently. I've changed the serving size from twelve to nine because that's all I could get out of the amount. Strange since my cupcakes weren't massive or excessive...

Finally, this recipe has a bit of a weird method where, instead of creaming your butter and sugar first, they just pop everything in together and then add the liquid ingredients. Strange, no? But it worked really well and made the whole recipe really time efficient.

Recipe via http://realfood.tesco.com

Prep Time: 10 min

Cook Time: 20-25 min

Serves: 9

Ingredients:

100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
40g butter, room temperature
120ml milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Beat the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt and butter with an electric whisk until it has the consistency of sand and is well mixed. In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, egg and vanilla extract before slowly adding to the dry ingredients.

Line your muffin tin with paper holders and fill them two thirds of the way up.

Bake for 20-25 min, decorate and enjoy!

Overnight Oats: Chocolate Raspberry

This dish is literally a revelation. I'm not known as much of a breakfast person and therefore, as you may have noticed, the majority of the recipes on this blog fall into the lunch or dinner categories. I'm just not very hungry first thing in the morning so the thought of putting in the effort to make something just isn't very appealing. However, there are some days when external forces conspire to create a busy day where there just isn't time for a snack until well into the afternoon and therefore a good breakfast is essential. Enter overnight oats. The combinations for this dish are endless and I'll definitely be posting more options as I go along. It takes about five minutes to mix the ingredients together and pop them in the container the night before and then when you wake up... they're ready! While this is a chilled breakfast and therefore ideal for summer, I thought they were equally good now when the weather is freezing since they're nice and filling. Served along side a cup of coffee or tea, you really don't even notice that it's a chilled dish.

Ingredients

Raspberry puree 

I first tried this recipe with just yogurt since I didn't have any almond milk on hand. You can of course substitute regular milk or soy milk if you prefer but I didn't have any of those on hand either. The result was a little too stodgy for my liking so I definitely recommend using both milk and yogurt. Also, I pureed the frozen raspberries but you could also toss them in whole if you wanted (probably best to defrost them first thought). I went ahead and pureed the whole package (350g) because I didn't want to have to do it every day for each serving. I just popped it in a spare jar and then left it in the fridge. I didn't bother sieving the seeds out but if you think they will annoy you then definitely go for it since they are noticeable in the final dish. FInally, I served this in a glass mason jar because I found that it was the most reliable when it came to avoiding leakage when I throw it in my bag for breakfast on the go but I'm sure a small tupperware would be fine as well.

Finished product

Cook Time: N/A
Prep Time: 5 min
Serves: 1

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of rolled oats or porridge oats
1/3 cup almond milk (sweetened or unsweetened)
1/3 cup fat free plain yogurt
1 tbsp raspberry puree
1 tbsp honey
Handful fresh raspberries
4 squares dark chocolate, chopped

Mix the oats, almond milk and yogurt in a small bowl until completely combined. Next stir in the raspberry puree, honey and the dark chocolate. Carefully spoon mixture in the serving jar or tupperware and top with fresh raspberries. Place in the fridge for a minimum of three hours or overnight. Enjoy!