November 2014 – Scaredy-Cat Kitchen

At 33 years old (for another week or so at least. If anyone says the words ‘mid-thirties’ there’s a good chance I’ll slap them) I’m extremely grateful to still be close friends with the fabulous group of girls I went to school with. I didn’t realise how unusual that is until fairly recently, I clearly chose my friends wisely. Last weekend all 8 of us got together for the first time in ages for a day full of chatting and a night full of cocktails & food here in good old London town. I was hosting so obviously I had to make a cake.

Helen has major problems with gluten, so a gluten-free cake was the order of the day and I decided that rather than whipping up one of my go to gluten-free cakes (this one and this one) I wanted to try something new and a tad more flamboyant. I knew I had to consult the queen of gluten-free cakes (and flamboyantness!) Nigella Lawson.

When I laid eyes on this cake it was love at first sight. I have a well documented obsession with pomegranates and a recipe that involves covering an entire cake with them is impossible for me to resist. Add to that the fact that this is almond based with tangy lemon and orange zest and I may have discovered my new go-to cake. (continue reading…)

Last November I visited my sister in New York and took a little trip to Trader Joe’s to pick up a jar of my favourite sunflower seed butter. Whilst languishing in the ridiculously gigantic queue I spotted a tin of organic pumpkin puree and realised that I’d never baked with pumpkin before.

It’s not exactly easy to find tinned pumpkin in England (although I have seen it in Tesco recently) and despite the proliferation of pumpkin spiced lattes around here, we’re not really pumpkin baked goods kind of people as a general rule. But I thought I should give it a go and see what the fuss was all about.

However, last year I didn’t find the right recipe, nothing tickled my fancy and the tin of pumpkin remained unloved in my kitchen cupboard until I moved house, when it moved with me and stayed unloved in a whole new cupboard.

That is until this autumn when every blog I came across was going nutty for pumpkin and I realised I could actually get in on this celebration of all things autumnal. A quick bit of recipe searching and I fell upon this completely gorgeous recipe from Pinch of Yum. What really drew me in was the maple glaze. I’ve never glazed anything before in my life so in the Scaredy-Cat spirit of this blog I thought I’d give it a go. Let me tell you, there’s a serious risk of all of my teeth falling out in the near future as I’m going to be glazing everything in sight from this point on.

(continue reading…)