Tart and sweet carrot lemon cake

‘Hiding’ vegetables in sweet baked goods is a great way of making them healthier and to up your five-a-day quota. And it makes for really tasty treats! I recently had my pantry overflowing with carrots and a sudden hunger for lemon cake – so I decided to combine carrot cake and lemon cake to produce their lovely and delicious love child. If you want to make this cake more carrot cake like, you can add some cinnamon to the batter – but it also tastes awesome without it! 

Fall for breakfast: vegan pumpkin pancakes

Since we are officially entering into the sweater weather season, it’s time to treat yourself to make the loss of summer a little easier. Every year around the end of september, with every day that passes I find it harder and harder to get out of bed every morning because I simply miss the the sunlight filtering through the blinds of my bedroom. So when I eventually manage to drag my lazy body out of bed and through the bathroom, I like to reward myself with something sweet for breakfast. In the early fall, this is one of my favorite recipes: Pumpkin pancakes with a subtle but distinct pumpkin spice flavor! I don’t use store-bought pumpkin spice but mix it myself, but you can of course simply substitute the spices below with the corresponding amount of premixed pumpkin spice. 

For a healthier sunday brunch: Guilt-free mini plum cakes

If you want to treat yourself without going on a chocolate binge – these little mini plum cakes are just the right thing for you! I made them for a sunday brunch, but you can of course enjoy them any other day for breakfast or for desert. I tried to make these as healthy as possible, so these cakes are fat free (well, if you forget about the fat used for greasing the muffin tin), contain only a minimum of added sugar and are made with wholemeal spelt flour instead of all purpose wheat flour. But don’t worry, they are still delicious! 

Delicious redcurrant oatmeal muffins with cinnamon

While I generally love all summer berries, redcurrant are one of my special favourites. They are not as sweet as strawberries or raspberries, and have an amazing sourly, fresh flavour which works great in all kinds of sweet and savoury dishes. They also keep longer in the fridge, so if you buy a big batch of them at your local market, you won’t have to eat nothing but redcurrant dishes for the next few days. And if you want to use the last ones up quickly – go make delicious muffins with them!

Since I usually eat porridge or muesli for breakfast and often add some fresh fruit to it as well, I decided to make redcurrant oatmeal muffins that are sweet enough to work as a desert, but at the same time work as a – relatively – healthy breakfast. I therefore replaced eggs and part of the vegetable fat with apple sauce, which also made it possible for me to significantly reduce the amount of sugar I used in this recipe: Each muffin contains just about one teaspoon of added sugar! Compared to many store-bought breakfast cereals, this is practically diet food. So go ahead and make all your friends jealous of your delicious to-go breakfast with these tasty redcurrant oatmeal muffins!