Gluten free banana, hazelnut and chocolate cake

Here is a really soft and tasty banana loaf, perfect for breakfast or tea time. And it's also gluten-free and dairy-free :)

Ingredients

- 2 medium bananas, diced

- 60g of chopped hazelnuts (or any other nuts)

- 50g of dairy-free dark chocolate chips

- 2 medium eggs

- 100g of dairy-free margarine (I use sunflower margarine)

- 150g of icing sugar (I ran out and used 50g of icing sugar + 100g of muscovado sugar, and I think it's tastier this way!)

- 100g of gluten-free plain flour (I usually use the Doves Farm mix or half rice flour/half corn flour)

- 1 tsp of gluten-free baking powder

- optional : 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum (if not already included in the flour mix)

Directions

1/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2/ With a hand mixer, cream the margarine and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs one at a time while whisking.

3/ Combine flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, nuts, bananas and chocolate. Add to the first mixture.

4/ Pour the mixture in a loaf tin, greased or lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for about 45 min.

NB: You can keep the cake for a few days in a sealed box, you'll be surprised how moist it stays!

Canelés bordelais (dairy-free version)

My dad's family lives in Bordeaux, a city in the South-West of France, and, as a child, I used to spend some of my holidays there. I remember how I was always excited about going downtown, partly because of all the shops I didn't have in my little village, but most of all for the sweet treat I was hoping to get during those errands, the delicate canelé, typical of Bordeaux.

The canelés are traditionally baked in copper moulds, but nowadays you can easily find canelés silicone moulds. However it is important to get the right one since their special shape will make all the difference during the baking!

It was my first attempt at baking cannelés and although they are usually made with milk, being on a dairy-free diet I tried to replace milk by the Blue Diamond almond milk I usually drink. It turned out really well and I was really impressed by the result even if they could have done with 10 more minutes in the oven. I hadn't eaten canelés in ages so I might have forgotten their exact taste but from what I remember it is quite close, close enough to share the recipe with you today. Next time I will try a gluten-free version as well but I didn't want to be too ambitious on my first attempt ;)

Ingredients (for a tray of 8 cannelés)

- 250 ml of almond milk (or any other plant milk)
- 1 whole egg + 1 yolk
- 1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthwise and scraped
- 1  tbsp of rhum
- 50 g of plain flour
- 100 g of sugar
- 25 g of dairy-free margarine
(- a pinch of salt if the margarine in unsalted)

Directions

1/ In a saucepan combine the milk, vanilla pod and its scraping. Bring it to a boil.

2/ In the meantime, combine the flour, sugar and egg. Then whisk in the boiling milk (without the vanilla pod). Stir until the mixture is really smooth (like a crepe mixture). Leave it to cool down, then add the rhum.

3/ Refrigerate for a at least 2 hours (ideally overnight).

4/ Preheat the oven to 270°C. Butter the canelés mould if it is not a silicon one.

5/ Give a stir to the mixture and pour it equally into the 8 holes of the mould. Bake for 5 minutes at 270°C and then lower the oven temperature to 180° and bake for another 50 to 70 minutes, depending on how dark/cooked you want them.

All the secret is in the cooking time but it can vary a lot depending on the oven :S Anyway the canelés should be dark and crunchy outside but still very soft in their centre. I like mine a bit underdone so actually I got them almost right for my taste, but a bit longer in the oven would have been perfect!

Jamie Oliver's Laksa Soup

Winter is long in England, very long, so quite unexpectedly I started to cook soups. For the record, I had always been complaing about having to eat soups, at school as well as at home. I didn't use to consider soups as a meal, after all, they are very liquid indeed! But well, all things change and my taste for food too, so I decided that this winter was going to be a soup winter. I invested in a blender and in a soup cookbook (that I never use) and I started to turn into my mum and ate (drink?) soups all winter. When I got bored with the traditional garden vegetable soup, I started to look for something a bit more original and found this amazing laksa soup with coconut milk (I slightly changed the recipe, but you can fing the original one there). And I can't stop cooking it since!

Ingredients

- 600 g of butternut squash, halved, peeled and deseeded

- 560 ml of chicken or vegetable stock (make sure it is dairy and gluten free)

- 200 g of basmati rice

- 800 ml of coconut milk (I use only half when I want a thicker soup)

- 1 to 3 chillies, deseeded and finely sliced

- 2 thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger, peeled

- 1 onion, chopped

- 2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

- a large handful of fresh parsley, chopped

- 1 heaped teaspoon 5 spices (I make the mix myself with star anise, cloves, sichuan pepper, cinnamon and fennel seeds, that are not grounded except for the cinnamon)

- 1 teaspoon ground cumin

- salt and pepper

- olive oil

Directions

1/ Chop the butternut squash into 5 cm pieces.

2/ Chop the chillies, garlic, ginger and parsley into tiny pieces, mix with the spices, add the chopped onion and cook gently in a high-sided pan with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes.

3/ Add the butternut squash, stir well, and add the stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and leave it cook for about 15 min with a lid on.

4/ Add the rice and give it a good stir. The butternut squash should start to mush up. Continue to simmer until the rice is cooked (about 10-12 more minute), then add the coconut milk, salt and pepper.

5/ Enjoy!

NB: You can freeze some of the soup for later.