Easy and Gorgeous Pumpkin Muffins

I spent all of last week in Dublin to launch MakeBakeLove and was delighted to be able to wander around one of my favourite food haunts Fallon & Byrne. I picked up two tins of pumpkin puree, for once I'll be ready for Halloween! I decided to make Pumpkin Muffins. Pumpkin Pie is still on my list of must bakes; Donal Skehans' gorgeous version is here.

This recipe only uses 100g of the tinned pumpkin, I'll post a recipe next week on a gorgeous soup that you can make with the remaining pumpkin!

'Make Bake Love' is out!

The book is now finally out! Yay! It's incredible to see stacks of MakeBakeLove in bookshops all over the country. Even though it only came out on Friday I've already had loads of people baking from it and letting me know what their favourites from the book are. It really is so exciting to be able to share the book with people who have never seen the blog and to see so many people getting back to baking! Massive thanks to all at Gill & MacMillan and to the brilliant Kristin who copy edited the whole book for me. She has her own lovely blogs Edible Ireland and Dinner du Jour and co-founded The Irish Food Bloggers Association. It was an incredible stroke of luck to have such a talented perfectionist on my team!

I was also really lucky that my boyfriend Colm took the photos of me for the book, seeing the photo he took on the cover really makes it for me!

If you can't make it to a bookshop and want to order online then here's a list of places where you can get it. I'm told it's out of stock at the moment on Amazon so these are your best bet!

Dubray Books

Gill and MacMillan

The Book Depository

Also some brilliant news: The book has been shortlisted for Best Irish Published Book Of The Year! I'd love if you took the time to vote for MakeBakeLove here. Thanks a million!

Lilly x

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Two of my sisters celebrate their Birthdays today! Hooray! So Happy Birthday to big sister Ettie and small sister Raedi! I made one of my favourite cakes from my book MakeBakeLove which will be out next week, it's so exciting to see it all printed and bound. Being able to flick through it and look at all the photos is great. It's like having the blog come to life!
This cake is the ultimate celebration. Peanut butter and chocolate is a winning combination. Covering the inside of the tins with chopped nuts adds a lovely texture and flavour, but you can just use flour if you like. To go totally overboard, you could pile some mini chocolate peanut butter drops or chocolate-covered nuts on top. A salty-sweet dream cake!

Chocolate and Coconut Granola

I usually make this granola in huge batches and it lasts about two weeks. I really love it and feel very virtuous knowing that it's sugar free and jam packed with nuts and fruit. But... I recently bought The Vintage Tea Party by Angel Adore and as if by fate the book opened on page 26; This glorious chocolate and coconut granola! It's really easy to make and is highly addictive. I told myself that this could be my 'weekend breakfast' but by Tuesday I was adding a little to my sugar free granola, then by Friday the stuff was gone!
It makes a gorgeous dessert layered with yogurt and fruit. And amazingly it really does turn the milk a chocolatey colour!

Prudence Magazine Article!

This month there's a four page spread of my house in Prudence magazine! I'm delighted that my gorgeous dog Bo got to be in it, even though she was beside herself with excitement she does look calm in the photos, phew!Thanks to Annette O'Meara who wrote the article and Paul Sherwood for the lovely photos.

Lilly x

Free Calender Desktop Background: September

A few months ago a blog reader emailed me asking if I could send her a high resolution photo of one of the cakes on the blog so that she could use it as a desktop background on her computer. She said that it would brighten up her office and I've been sending her photos ever since! So now I've decided to make it 'official' and I've added a calender so that you too can have a lovely desktop background!

I love doing things like this and putting it all together so will  upload a calender each month, I actually can't wait to do a Toffee Apple one for Halloween and a Coconut Snowball one for Christmas! Hurray!

For September's calender I've used two of my favourite flower photos (above). It's actually the same bunch of flowers but one is a close up of the sage, fennel leaves and flower.  You can download them on Flickr:

Here's the bright and summery one.

Here's the more Autumnal subtle one.

I'm using Flickr as I think thats probably the easiest way to download them. I'm going to move the calender up slightly this evening so it should suit all general computer screens.

Have a lovely weekend!

Lilly x

Easy Indian Flatbread & The Loaves & Fishes August Menu

UPDATE: The Supper Club is now booked out for August and as I'm going on maternity leave we're taking a break till next year but I'll keep the blog updated about future events! Thanks! x

Mango Fool with Coconut Biscuits

  I've been doing loads of cooking and recipe testing in preparation for the next (and last for a while!) Loaves & Fishes Supper. As usual there will be a loose theme and the planned summery evening will be Indian! Nothing will be too crazy hot or spicy so everyone should enjoy it. I'm using the amazing spices from Green Saffron, a Cork based company that import and mix the most amazing fresh spices.

• Cucumber and Elderflower Champagne Cocktail
• Mini Poppadums with fresh mint, red onion and mango chutneys
• Chola Tikki (Indian Falafel) with salad
• Green Saffron Red Lentil Dahl with Pilau Rice, Banana Raita and Coriander Flatbreads
• Mango Fool with Coconut Biscuits
• Tea & Coffee with Eastern Mendiants

Everything is homemade and it was great to practice making everything, especially the flatbreads! I've included the recipe below.I think they'd be perfect with dill added for a greek meal or chilli flakes. It's similar to a scone recipe and very versatile.