Gingerbread Syrup

I wanted to share this quickly before our train to beautiful Scotland for Christmas. Are you worried that you won’t be able to have your gingerbread latte in the new year? Don’t worry, make your own gingerbread syrup (and even better your own lattes so that you don’t spend all that money in well-known coffee chains). If making lattes then you’ll want a stove top, a milk frother and some finely ground coffee ( I am a big Pact coffee fan). Make your coffee, heat and froth your milk, then pour your syrup into your cup followed by the milk and coffee. BAM. Christmas in your mouth.

Christmas Pudding Vodka

I’ve made this as a Christmas gift this year and thought I should share the idea in case you were looking for a way to spice up your festive drinks cabinet. I’m a mulled wine or sloe gin kind of girl but the vodka drinkers shouldn’t be left out during the festive season, so this one is for them. It is great because it only takes a few days, unlike other festive booze which can take months (i.e. sloe gin – I can’t wait to drink mine, it is now a deep red colour, it looks gorgeous!!!).I only really drink in December, I just love all the festive drinks on offer.

Sloe Gin

Further to making blackberry and apple jam, the very same berry picking episode led to finding and picking some sloe berries! My very first sloe picking venture and as such I am going to do something very unfoodbloggerish and share a recipe I haven’t tried yet; a recipe for sloe gin. I am in the process of trying it but sloe gin takes months to mature/develop/official technical term, so I began mine the other week and I thought we could take this journey together. You make yours now too and we can share notes over our various sloe gin batches at Christmas, yes? I found a recipe online and got to work. Do you have a preferred recipe? Let me know!

The picture is two weeks in, so hopefully by Christmas it will be a beautifully deep red colour.

Spicy Hot Chocolate (Dairy Free)

Happy Easter!! Have you had chocolate for breakfast? I hope so.

This hot chocolate was inspired by a delicious hot chocolate that I had an at amazing café a few weekends back. It was so good that I set about to make my own. Before I go into the details, let’s talk about this café; it served sourdough toast, kale scrambled eggs, buckwheat, banana and almond pancakes and so many other incredible dishes. The cake selection though, oh my gosh, never have I had to make a tougher cake decision. They cater to many dietary requirements, gluten free, vegan etc and everything is helpfully labelled. If you live in Kent, lucky you! The place is Kitch, Canterbury.

Onwards to the recipe…

Banana Choconut Milkshake

This weekend I have been sick with a horrible cold/sore throat/sinus related barrel of fun. Confined to my bed I found myself wanting a treat, eating dairy when unwell isn’t overly advisable though and I wanted something a little more nutritious to help me on my road to recovery. I knocked this up for James and I (we both had the dreaded lurgy, our place has not been a healthy place this week, let’s leave it at that) and it hit the spot; before I promptly fell back into a semi-sleep state coupled with a head feeling like it was full of lead, downing cups of lemsip rotated with hot lemon, honey and ginger.

This definitely cheered me up, even if I still felt pretty terrible.