It’s zucchini season! Lunch boxes and more…

It has been a busy week here, with kids starting a new year at school. It hasn’t taken long to get back into the old routine of menu planning and lunch box prepping.

I feel like this year will be different though.  I am allowing myself a little bit of time just for me. The family schedule is filling up fast, but I am making sure that in there, there is some time for me to get back a little bit of sanity, to exercise a little bit and just take some deep breaths.

I have set myself a challenge, to exercise every day in February for 30 minutes. It may be a walk, or weights or pilates or a run . So far, so good. Ok, so it’s only day 1, but whatever, as far as I’m concerned, I’m 100% on target! I’ll keep you posted how I am going!

And now onto cake… 😉

spinach shrek cake

dairy free with gluten free options 🙂

   It has been one helluva week. Hubby ended up in hospital (and is still there now, 3 days on), nothing too serious, but something that needed to be monitored. Hopefully, fingers crossed, he will be out tomorrow. We are so close to the end of the school term, Friday next week is the last day, and I find myself struggling to keep everything together. I even said to Miss E the other day “you only need to read 4 pages of your reader because it’s nearly the end of term”. Complete lie. Thankfully my kids are pretty good readers, so I don’t tend to stress too much about that anyway, but still, my standards are slipping in more ways than one.

Pumpkin chocolate cake Dairy free, Egg free

If you are reading this post, we have reached 500 likes on the kids, recipes and organised chaos facebook page . Either that, or I’ve gotten impatient and want to share this recipe with you all anyway! Thanks to all those who shared the page 🙂

Earlier this week, I was reading on a facebook health page about someone having excess cooked pumpkin, and what should they do with it? A reply came, pumpkin chocolate cake. No recipe was given, so I searched the internet for a recipe, but was having trouble finding what I wanted. I found lots of pumpkin bread recipes, lots of pumpkin shaped chocolate cakes, lots of chocolate cakes with pumpkin ganache between the layers, but no pumpkin chocolate cakes. I was getting impatient. I had pumpkin, and I wanted desperately to use it in a cake!

So, I came up with this recipe. I hope you like it!

This is  a lovely fluffy cake, and would be great at parties when you have kids with intolerances or allergies.

 
PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE VEGAN CAKE
3 cups plain flour
2 tsp bicarb soda (baking soda)
2 tbs white vinegar
1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup heaped raw cacao or cocoa
between 3/4 – 1 cup cooked pumpkin
1 cup heaped sugar
2/3 cup coconut oil (could use butter if dairy is ok, or other veg oil of choice)
1, 1/4 cup hot water

Put all ingredients into a food processor and process until smooth (or mix by hand)
Bake in moderate oven, 180’C for around 40 mins or until skewer comes out clean.
I would assume this recipe could be used to as a basic vegetable chocolate cake recipe, where you could sub in most cooked veg instead of pumpkin, like beetroot or carrot. Hmmm, maybe even a mix?
I imagine it would be nice with a cream cheese icing too – but I imagine most things would taste good with cream cheese icing! Also, choc chips in the cake would be nice, or even some nuts or seeds. My kids devoured this happily, and I hope yours do too!

Slow cooker cake recipe

 I was at my nieces birthday on the weekend where her Godfather had made an awesome cake, which he revealed was a slow cooker cake recipe. The concept of a slow cooked cake had never occurred to me before, so straight away I was intrigued.

I am often in the situation where my house is a mess, the kitchen is atrocious, and I’ll think, hmmm, I should bake a cake!  Today was one of those days. Problem is, I often make the cake, pop it in the oven and then forget about it! I cannot tell you how many cakes I have burnt in my time.  So today I thought I’d try slow cooker cake because surely I couldn’t burn that, right?

Frantic cleaning, orange cake and Gatsby

If you read my post yesterday you will know that last night I had a night out with my sister. We went to the movies to see Gatsby. It was a fantastic movie, I adore Leonardo Dicaprio, and he certainly didn’t disappoint, either did spider man (what’s that actor’s name again?). Although it was great to get out of the house for a bit, and not worry about organising a baby sitter, it was a late night and I just didn’t have the time or energy to make lunches last night, or to do the proper pre bed pick up.

Sausage rolls and carrot cake

I’ve noticed lately that my kids seem to be given a lot of lollies and chocolates at school. They won table points, here’s a lollipop. It’s someone’s birthday, here’s a freddo. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely opposed to sugar, I just try to limit how much my kids eat it, and also, make sure that if they are having treats, that they are perhaps home cooked cake or a reasonable quality chocolate. Yesterday my kids had a market day at school, and although I asked them not to buy too much junk food, of course, they loaded up on toffees, smarties, mixed lollies and cakes. I probably would have done the same at their age.