Rhubarb & Custard Cookie Sandwiches

My lovely friend Emma Jane makes and sells bespoke cookie stamps over at Emma Jane's Bakery, and she was kind enough to give me some stamps to play with just before Christmas. Since then I've been developing a recipe for vegan sugar cookies that retain the imprint from the cookie stamps when baked, and now that I've perfected it, I'm finally ready to share it!

I've used custard powder as a binding agent in this recipe, which gives the biscuits a really lovely, subtle custard flavor. If you don't have custard powder or don't want to use it feel free to replace it with the same amount of cornflour for a delicious vanilla flavor sugar cookie.

I filled the cookies with a tangy rhubarb frosting, and sprinkled some crushed rhubarb and custard boiled sweets over the top before sandwiching them together. After all, rhubarb and custard are a classic flavor combination for a good reason!

Emma Jane offered to make a custom design stamp for me, and I chose a Dala Horse. As you can see, it turned out oh so perfect! Although I must admit that I'm head over heels in love with the 'for me, for you' stamp. As a mum I'm constantly having my food pinched by tiny toddler hands, so I loved that with these cookies I could break off a piece for Hal and the rest was MINE! Also, how perfect would the stamp be for Valentines Day? A romantic cookie for two, anyone?

Rhubarb & Custard Cookie Sandwiches
Makes 10 Cookie Sandwiches

For the cookies
1/2C + 1tsp vegan margarine
1/2C caster sugar
2 + 1/4C plain flour
2Tbsp vegan custard powder
4Tbsp soy or almond milk
1tsp vanilla extract

For the frosting
3Tbsp vegan buttery spread
3-4C powdered sugar
1tsp rhubarb flavoring
1/2tsp pink food coloring 
2-4tsp soy or almond milk

2 rhubarb and custard sweets, crushed (optional)

Line two large baking trays with grease proof paper and set aside.

Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy (I use my Kitchen Aid mixer, but you could use a handheld electric whisk or do it by hand - make sure your margarine is nice and soft.) Add the vanilla, flour, custard powder and milk and mix on medium speed until it comes together to form a firm, pale dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and dust the top with flour also. Roll into an oval about 3mm thick and press the cookie stamps down nice and firmly, making sure to leave a strong imprint in the dough. Repeat, leaving a small gap between each one until you have covered the surface of the dough. Cut out your cookies using a floured cookie cutter (in a pinch a glass jar will do!) and carefully transfer them to the lined baking trays. Bring together the scraps of dough and work into a ball, you can then repeat the rolling, stamping and cutting process until you have 20 individual cookies.

Place the cookies in the fridge for an hour before baking at 175/350 for 10-12mins or until lightly golden and firm to the touch. Transfer the baked cookies onto a wire rack to cool completely while you make the frosting.

To make the frosting cream together the buttery spread, rhubarb flavoring, pink coloring and one cup of the powdered sugar until smooth. Gradually add the rest of the powdered sugar and as much milk as needed until you have a smooth, thick, fluffy frosting. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a flower nozzle and seal at the top.

Once the cookies are cooled pipe frosting onto half of them, covering as much of the surface of the cookie as possible. Sprinkle over the crushed rhubarb and custard sweets and carefully place the other cookies on top. Press down gently - be careful not to press too hard or the frosting will squidge out.

Store the cookie sandwiches in an airtight container for up to a week.

Note: The cookie dough can be frozen for up to 3 months. Thaw completely before using. This dough also makes fantastic individual sugar cookies for decorating with kids! We did this recently at a play date and it was great fun.

Sunny Lemon Spread!

I was very excited when the lovely Hannah from Hannah Banana Bakery offered to send me some of her Sunny Lemon Spread to try! Vegan lemon curd is something I've been on the lookout for, but I can safely say the search is over! 

Hannah Banana Bakery not only makes incredible, award winning vegan cakes and cupcakes to order, but often offers various other tasty vegan treats too! 

The Sunny Lemon Spread is freshly made with hand-squeezed lemons (and you can really tell - much better than artificial shop-bought stuff!) It's sweet, very lemon-y and really delicious. It's lovely on toast or in a sandwich, but I think it would be great as a filling for macarons, or to sandwich together layers of a cake! And how cute is the label on the little jar!? Adorable! 

I'll definitely be buying more when they are restocked for Valentines Day (my jar has been polished off already!)

Hannah Banana Bakery's Sunny Lemon Spread costs £2.50 per jar and can be shipped anywhere in the UK.

Chocolate & Mint Tea

I'm pretty obsessed with tea. I have a trolley packed full with boxes of tea and yet I can never resist grabbing any new teas I see in the shops! I've been wanting to try teapigs Chocolate & Mint tea for a while, and they kindly sent me some to sip.

I only had to open the box to know this tea would be amazing. The incredible aroma of minty-chocolatey goodness is overwhelming and the tea tastes as good as it smells! I'm a sucker for mint flavored anything, but the addition of little chunks of dark chocolate make this tea to die for!

It's lovely hot, but is especially delicious served over ice, really refreshing on a hot summer day.

What's your favorite tea?

A Trip to Rochester // Baby on Board

A few weeks ago I visited Rochester for the day with two of my best besties Olivia & Nicola. We had a fab day pottering about charity shops, drinking tea and having girly chats! Is there anything better!? Notonthehighstreet recently sent me some of their new 'Baby on Board' collection - they've collaborated with Transport For London to celebrate being the official sponsors of the Baby on Board badge and have created some beautiful products for pregnant ladies! How funny is the cute greetings card they sent me!?

One of the products they gifted me was this brilliant shopper bag. I decided that my trip to Rochester was the perfect time to try it out. I filled it with all my day-trip essentials, including my rather chunky camera and a big bottle of water and we set off for a day of girly fun.

I'd never been to Rochester before, and I was overwhelmed by how cute it is! There was even bunting all down the highstreet! (They must have known I was coming!)

I've never seen so many cute vintage, charity and odds and ends shops in one place before! It was heaven for someone like me!

I can never resist a sewing shop! I love looking at pretty colorful fabrics and buttons and imagining the craft projects I could use them for.

Every shop we went in was filled with beautiful bits and bobs - it was amazing! My favorite shop of the day was definitely Hendersons, a little quirky shop selling gifts, cards, jewelry and vintage odds and ends. I picked up some lovely vintage Tupperware bowls for 50p each - score!

We popped into the sweetest little tea room called Fleur de Thé for a cuppa and a wee rest (you have to take a lot of breaks when you're this pregnant!) I completely fell in love with every piece of china and cutlery in this place, and you can actually buy the teacups, teapots and even the beautiful spoons in store! I had a pot of green-peach tea and it was really yummy!

We had a wonderful time and even though I was carrying around quite a lot of rather heavy things in my shopper bag I have to say it didn't feel heavy at all! The straps are nice and wide so they distribute the weight evenly on your shoulder, so it's a really comfortable bag to use. It's also nice and big so you can fill it with all your bits and bobs and there's still room for any bits of shopping you pick up while you're out and about! 

A Seaside Picnic//Crushed Pouches Review

Don't you love the summer weather? Here in England we really try to appreciate every ray of sunshine we're blessed with in the summer months, so when we awoke on Sunday to a gloriously sunny day we knew we had to make the most of it! We packed the picnic basket full to the brim with delicious goodies and set off to Folkestone for some family fun.

The lovely ladies of Crushed UK recently sent me a package of their delicious fruit pouches to try, their portable and resealable pouches are perfect for healthy snacking on the go so we took a few with us as part of our picnic.

I can't really describe just how much Hal loves these fruit pouches. They're a super scrummy snack for adults and children, Hal especially loves them after they've been in the freezer for 20 minutes or so - they're like a portable fruit slushy! 

For adults they're delicious stirred into yogurt and sprinkled with granola as a filling, fruity breakfast bowl, although they're also fab to keep in your bag to keep those pesky hunger pangs at bay.

At the moment there are two flavors - Apple and Strawberry and Apple and Banana but Crushed UK are planning to bring out more flavors soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

You can find Crushed Fruit Pouches in Waitrose in store and online and in WHSmithTravel throughout the UK.

We had a lovely time on our picnic - munching on cookies, VBites sausage rolls, vegan cheese and pesto sandwiches and lots of fruit. Hal enjoyed watching people walk along the beach, and even tried to follow a friendly dog home!

What do you like to do when it's sunny?

Banana Bundt with Salted Honee Icing

There are some things I thought I would never taste again, having gone vegan, and Honey was one of them. However, a wonderful Instagram friend Carly recently sent me a box of goodies from Portland and Bee Free Honee was one of them!

Bee Free Honee is made from apples, so no bees are exploited in the process! Not only is it a delicious substitute for honey in tea but it's wonderful in baked goods like this Banana Bundt with Salted Honee Icing.

This moist, sweet Banana Cake pairs perfectly with a salty-sweet Honee Icing and is finished with a light sprinkle of Lavender Salt. The perfect accompaniment to a pot of Earl Grey.

Banana Bundt with Salted Honee Icing

Recipe adapted from here

Serves 16-18

3C plain flour

2tsp baking soda

1/2tsp salt

1tsp ground cinnamon

2 sticks (8oz) dairy free margarine

2C sugar

1Tbsp vanilla extract

1Tbsp Bee Free Honee

4 large bananas, mashed (2C mashed)

1C almond/soy milk + 1Tbsp apple cider vinegar

For the icing

1 1/2C powdered sugar

1Tbsp Bee Free Honee

1/2tsp salt

1/2tsp vanilla extract

4tsp almond/soy milk

1tsp lavender salt*

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment cream together the margarine, sugar, vanilla and Honee until fluffy. Add the mashed bananas and mix well. (The mixture will curdle, don't worry!) 

Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and mix the apple cider vinegar into the almond milk and set aside to curdle. Add half of the dry into the wet and mix well, then add the milk-vinegar mixture and mix. Finally add the second half of the dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth.

Pour into a 9-12C bundt pan that has been generously buttered and floured. Smooth the top and bang on the work surface once to remove excess air bubbles. Place in the center of the oven and bake for 60 minutes. (You may want to put some foil over the pan after 30 minutes to prevent the top from browning too quickly.)

The cake is done when a skewer or knife inserted deep into the cake center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before carefully turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely while you make the icing.

Make the icing by mixing all the ingredients together in a small bowl until you have a thick but pour-able icing. Once the cake is cooled drizzle over the icing and finish with a sprinkle of lavender salt.

Store in an airtight container for a week.

*Make your own lavender salt by mixing 1Tbsp dried lavender into 1/3C salt - I like to use fleur de sel.

Goody Good Stuff Sweets Review

The fab folks over at Goody Good Stuff sent me a package of goodies to try! I'm always up for trying new vegan sweets - and these are brilliant!

Goody Good Stuff is an all-natural gummy sweet range which uses plant-based ingredients as opposed to the gelatin that most gummy sweets use. You can find them in health food shops, some sweet shops and online.

Cola Breeze are deliciously fizzy gummy cola bottles! These are a childhood classic and probably my favorite of the ones I tried. I love fizzy sweets and especially like sucking the sour sugar off of these!

Summer Peaches are a peach-y treat! These gummy sweets have a slightly firmer texture, and have a really lovely peach flavor without being overwhelmingly sweet. These would be great on top of some Peach Cupcakes!

The Tropical Fruit sweets are so good. I love that each fruit gummy actually tastes of the fruit it looks like - the banana ones actually taste of banana! I've never had banana flavored gummy sweets before and really loved them!

Being a sour sweet enthusiast the Sour Fruit Salad was right up my street! I especially loved the pear ones and would definitely buy them in the future.

Reading List #1

I don't know about you, but I love to read. Especially if what I'm reading is full of vegan recipes! I've got so many cookery books that they have their own bookcase! I thought it would be fun to start a feature on Floral Frosting all about vegan stuff I've been reading.

I'm starting off this series with a triple whammy of vegan reads - a magazine, a cookery book and a zine!

I was super excited when this magazine caught my eye at my local health food shop! I occasionally buy Vegetarian magazines but am often disappointed at their lack of vegan recipes, so how exciting is it that the UK now has a 100% Vegan lifestyle magazine!? 

Vegan Life Magazine is jam packed with interesting recipes, articles and information about everything vegan! The first issue had lots of Asian inspired recipes, an interesting article about the ethics of keeping your own hens and shared a list of the top 10 Vegan Cheeses for a wine and cheese night! At the moment you can get a yearly subscription for less than £15!

I'm always on the lookout for new cookery books (even though I have so many!) And when I found out that Áine of Pea Soup Eats had written a vegan cook book I knew I had to have it! Áine is an incredible cook and her book Keep It Vegan is jam packed with delectable recipes for everything from Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins to Butternut Squash Macaroni Cheese! 

I'm fairly new to the world of 'zines', and Reap What You Sow is actually the first zine I've ever bought! Written by the super talented Abigail Stevens, a journalism graduate who works for The Vegan Society, this zine is perfect for new and old vegans alike. The first edition is particularly great for non-vegans or new vegans, as it explains lots of basics about veganism (it includes a list of non vegan E-numbers which I have found really helpful) and has plenty of great recipes for things like simple vegan Mayo and Fried Seitan 'Chicken'. 

I'm really excited about the future editions of this zine, especially as I will be writing a lot of the recipes for it! You can buy the first edition for only £1 here.

What have you been reading recently? I'd love to hear your recommendations!