Cooking: One Fat Lady and some Lavender Slices

Having this IBS can be pretty shitty sometimes. I can't really eat bread or pasta or potatoes. Basically all the starchy amazing carbs that taste like heaven make me poorly Oh! and Bananas! What the crap is going on with that?...bloody love a banana too. One of my favourite things in the world though is cake- man, I looove the cake and I refuse to not have any and usually end up bent over double after eating it- sooo worth it. Ha...what a nobhead...So when I want to not feel like I've been hit in the stomach with a mallet, I make my own cakes. Since I've been blogging, I've seen quite a few of you have similar problems to mine, wether it's IBS or an intolerance to maybe Wheat or Gluten, so I thought that from now on I'm going to include a recipe day once a week to share some of my favourite things that don't make me want to vomit into my own shoe! If were making all this effort to look shit hot on the outside, need to keep the inside just as fine!

These are my Lemon, Lavender and Honey Mini Slices and they are DIIIIIIIVINE! 

Right your ingredients list is as follows....Don't judge or question; just buy and trust. 

170g Peeled and Cubed Courgette or Parsnip cut into 2cm cubes- 

It's great as you can interchange your veggies; these are the best two for this though in my opinion.

150g Caster Sugar (+ a little for dusting)

2 Medium Free Range Eggs

1 tbsp of Grated Lemon Zest

1 tbsp of Edible Lavender (+ a little for dusting).....

Crushed up in a Pestle and Mortar with....

1/4 tsp Salt

1 tbsp of Runny Honey

1 tsp of Vanilla

80g White Rice Flour

100g Ground Almonds

2 tsp of Baking Powder ( I use a wheat and gluten free one, you don't have to though!) 

Pre- heat your oven to 175c

1) Take your peeled and cubed veg, whichever one you've picked (my fave is the Courgette but I had Parsnips in.....) and pop it in a microwave safe bowl with a tablespoon of water, cling film it and microwave it for about 7 minutes till it's soft.

2) While your veg is cooking away, whisk up your eggs and sugar for maybe 5 minutes until they look frothy. 

3) Now take you cooked Courgette/Parsnip whatever, and mush it together with a fork till it's pureed and smooth. It takes a few minutes but bare with it. If you have a blender; whack it in that but I can't be bothered with the washing up. When it's pureed, add it to the sugar and eggs and give it a quick whisk together. 

4) Now you want to add in all your "wet" ingredients- the lemon, the honey and the vanilla. 

5) And now the dry ingredients- the lavender and salt, the rice flour, the grounds almonds and the baking powder. Now give all this a mix togeher. I'm a jammy cowbag and have a kitchenaid mixer so it takes maybe 20 seconds, if your hand mixing, maybe a minute. You don't want to over mix your ingredients or you'll get a tough as old donkey arse bun at the end. Just do it till everything is combined.

6) I have these little individual loaf tins (from Lakeland) which take 1 ice cream scoop's worth of batter each- perfect portion sized, but you could just cook this in a regular loaf tin. If you do that, increase the oven temperature to 180c and your cooking time will go up to 25-30 minutes. 

7) So portion up your batter and bake off these little puppies for 15-20 minutes until cooked. You know its done if you can stick a skewer inside them and it comes out clean. Leave them in the tin for a few minutes to relax and them move them to a wire rack to cool properly.

8) You can do 2 toppings, simple is just a scattering of extra caster sugar and lavender over the top when they're cooled. My favourite is if you take a few tablespoons of cream cheese in a bowl, a quick zesting of lemon and add some icing sugar in to taste- I like it quite cheesy, the beau likes it more sweet, its a preference thing! Then slab a blob of this on top- gow-jus! I didn't think to get some in, I so wish I had as it just takes it to the next level- like Unicorn status!! 

It was so nice today so we camped out on the decking with these bad boys and some tea. They are best served with fancy-shmansey tea cups and a soundtrack of She and Him songs- just perfection.