Hi,
Welcome to this week’s newsletter. It’s celebration week in our house. Three of our kids have their birthdays within five days of each other!
Today is our five-year old’s birthday and it’s been a whirlwind of fun activities, including a trip to a local Butterfly Farm.
Oh, and we've got a new issue that'll be in shops next week - I'll send an email in the next few days about what's inside - you can snaffle a copy here.
Here’s some of the other things I’ve been up to this week:
MAKING CAKES
At the beginning of the week we celebrated my eldest’s 25th birthday with a family lunch at home. For pudding, I made a lemon and lime cheesecake, adapted from a recipe at BBC Good Food. It came out a bit grey so I added a punnet of raspberries to the creamy filling, and ended up with a pink cake!
Here’s how to make my version: Put 300g cashews in a large bowl, pour over boiling water and leave to soak for 1 hr. Meanwhile, blitz 30g coconut oil, 100g blanched almonds and 100g soft pitted dates for the base with a pinch of salt in a food processor. Grease a 23cm tart tin with coconut oil, then press the mix into the base and pop in the fridge to set (about 30 mins).
Drain the cashews and tip into the cleaned out food processor. Add 3 tbsp agave syrup, 50g coconut oil, 150ml almond milk, punnet of raspberries and 1 lemon and 1 lime, zested and juiced (keep a little zest and some raspberries back to decorate), then blitz until smooth. Spoon onto the base and put in the fridge to set completely (about 2 hrs). Just before serving, scatter over the reserved lemon zest. Simple!
Tomorrow for our family barbecue, I’m making this amazing pink strawberry cake by Anthea Cheng at Rainbow Nourishments (pictured above). Anthea’s my go-to when I need a tasty vegan, gluten free recipe, especially cakes!
