Bakedin Gluten Free Brownie Mug

At the end of July I came across a fab brand called Bakedin – they create the perfect mixes for all sorts of baked goodies and send them out to you in the post for you to make at home.  I added them to my August lust list after discovering that they had gluten free mixes that can easily adapted to be made dairy free too.  I was just about to place my order on their website, when I received my Vegan Tuck Box (post to come soon) which featured one of these brownie mug mixes!  As you can imagine I was pretty excited, so I decided to leave my actual order until I had tried this one out.

Now mug mixes are easy, they don’t take much time or effort and they usually turn out pretty good.  Bakedin mug cakes are AMAZING – they take legit two minutes in total to put together and cook, and they taste FANTASTIC!  It really is so super easy, you simply melt the butter for 10 seconds, throw in the powdered mix and the splash of milk (I used plant based alternatives for both) mix together and put it in the microwave for one minute.  That’s it!  Leave to cool for a few minutes and tada – you’ve got yourself a pretty damn good dessert ready to tuck in to.

No big messes needed with Bakediin like one!

The mix turns into a delicious sponge – it’s so good that you couldn’t even tell that it was diary or gluten free.  There are no clumpy bits throughout like there normally tends to be in your regular mug cakes – just tasty spongey goodness.  The mix creates the perfect sized cake, just enough to satisfy your sweet tooth but not enough to make you feel sick afterwards or feel the need to leave any.  Every mouthful is as yum as the last one, and you find little chocolate chunks throughout the sponge which adds to the indulgence of the cake.  It’s honestly so good that it’s hard to believe that this was a quick mix fix.

I am absolutely delighted that I got to try this in my Vegan Tuck box this month, I am so in love with the gluten free brownie mug cake – and can’t wait till pay day to place my order for a pack!   I think I’m going to treat myself to one of the gluten free brownie mixes too, just because I’ve got the feeling that it’s going to be equally as good.

Have you tried out any of the Bakedin mug cakes yet?

Until the next one,

Summer Berries at Tesco

This month The Orchard at Tesco invited me to be a part of their Summer Berries programme, which I was super pleased about because its strawberry season!  They kindly sent me a £3 voucher to pick myself up a punnet of berries of my choosing, and in return would like to know my honest thoughts about the product I chose.  I grabbed myself the largest and nicest looking punnet of strawberries from my local Tesco, with a dessert in mind that I found from my nutritionists website here.  I’ve been dying to try out coconut cream for a while now, so thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a go!

The strawberries are the most gorgeous shade of red ever – they look really healthy and fresh in the punnet, as if I have just picked them off a farm myself there and then!  As I washed them under the tap, the sweet aroma of the strawberries filled the kitchen, which is one of my all-time favourite smells ever.  There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh strawberries.  I picked myself a decent sized portion from the punnet, and cut them into halves to enjoy with my coconut cream.  The smell grew stronger as I did this, and the juices spilled onto the chopping board – proving that I had a really delicious and fresh bunch too! 

To make your coconut cream, you simply need to purchase yourself a tin of full fat coconut milk.  Pop in the fridge overnight, and the next day your milk will have turned into a really thick cream – which is absolutely delightful with strawberries, might I add!   I added a tiny amount of agave nectar to my bowl for a little extra sweetness, however this really was not necessary because the strawberries tasted as good as they smelt!  Sometimes when I buy strawberries, I find them to look really appealing but taste rather bland or simply like water as I make my way through the punnet.  Tesco did not disappoint with these ones though, every strawberry tastes as good as the last one – and unfortunately for me, my family seem to think so too!  I went to bed with a near half full punnet last night, only to discover this morning that I’ll be needing to make another purchase sooner rather than later! 

I’m really, really pleased with these strawberries from Tesco, and super chuffed that I got to try them for free, thanks to The Orchard programme!

What’s your favourite summer berry?

Until the next one,

Chocolate Chip Cookies

So on Wednesday, I was feeling a little creative and decided that I was going to put my baking hat on and go a little nuts.  I’m not a baker, and so by nuts, I mean I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I followed a recipe on the BBC Good Food website listed below, only I doubled the recipe.  I wanted to make big, chunky cookies, and so doubling the recipe meant that I would still get the same amount of cookies as the standard batch, just bigger!

You will need:

300g salted butter (soften before use for an easier mix)

160g brown sugar

160g granulated or caster sugar

Vanilla extract (to your preference)

2 large eggs

450g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2tsp salt

400g chocolate chips

The above ingredients are for the double batch that I made, for a standard batch, simply half the amount per item.

To start, you should preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5.  After this, I then lined four (that’s right, I had four trays of cookies) with a non-stick greased baking paper to stop them from sticking to the trays. 

Next, you mix the butter and sugars into a bowl, and beat them until thick and creamy.  Once this was done, I then added in the vanilla (which I’m not going to lie, I added about half a 90ml bottle to the mixture), and slowly poured in the whisked eggs.  The toughest part was sieving in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the salt to the mixture and mixing it all together until it came to the cookie dough.  The mixture was so tough that I actually managed to snap a wooden spoon, how many of you can say you’ve done that whilst making cookies?!  

RIP

Finally, you add in the chocolate chips and stir them in so that they are mixed all the way through.  I used two bags of milk chocolate chips on Wednesday when I made them, and today used three bags, one milk, one white and one dark.  I will be following today’s footsteps forever more, just so you are all aware.

Finally, you’re ready to scoop them out onto your trays and pop them in the oven.  I placed large round blobs of the mixer on the trays, I managed approx. 7 cookies per tray.  Because they were larger, the cookies did take a lot longer to cook (today about 20-25 minutes) – but it is totally worth the extra time!

Once cooked, leave them for about 5-10 minutes and tada!  You’ve got yourself a tasty, and very calorific snack… enjoy!

Please note, that this recipe was sourced from BBC Good Food, I simply altered the recipe to my own preference :)

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2459643/vintage-chocolate-chip-cookies

What’s your favourite dessert to bake?

Until the next one,

Lauren x