Happy Valentines Day! Raspberry Chia Pudding

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

We are heading off for a 2 week camping trip in the beautiful Hawkes Bay today woop! Super exciting but this means we are packing and on the road for most of Valentines Day.  Not the most romantic date ever so we celebrated instead with a Valentine's themed brekkie: a super healthy, oh so pretty in pink, totally swoon-worthy Raspberry Chia Pudding.

Coz nothing says I love you better than chia pudding.

Lol jokes, we all know chocolate = love. But this is pretty darn delicious and a healthy breakfast in your belly is sure to put a little love in your heart.

Black forest chia chocolate pudding and a favour

First, I'd like to ask you a favour.

10 years ago today, my dad turned 48.
For his birthday, he cooked us dinner.  Even though he was really sick.
That's the kinda person he was, always putting others before himself. Always putting us first.

That was the last birthday we got to celebrate with him.  He passed away five months later.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the things he did for us and the person he was.  There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not thinking about him, missing him, and wanting to be more like him.

So today I'm celebrating his memory with you all: those of you who knew him, those of you who loved him, those of you who he never even met - because he was too good a person not to share.

And my favour is this: Let's all do something nice for someone today. Even if it is only a little thing, the world would be a little bit of a better place today, because of you, because of my dad.

Happy birthday Dad.

Every year on Dad's birthday, I try to make something black forest because that was his favourite type of cake. So this year, since I'm on a bit of a health buzz, I made Black Forest Chia Chocolate Pudding. Even though I know Dad would've scrunched his nose at all the hippy stuff.

Forgotten cookies / Chocolate & pistachio meringue cookies

These are Chocolate and Pistachio Meringue Cookies also known as "Forgotten Cookies"
 
These gorgeous bite size morsels are lovely delicate meringue cookies that are jam packed with pistachio nuts and chunks of dark chocolate.

Forgotten by name but unforgettable by nature.

This is the perfect recipe to let you know that I haven't forgotten you all!

The "forgotten" part alludes to the ridiculously low maintenance way of cooking them - as soon as you get your cookies in the oven, you can turn off the heat and forget about them until the next day.

Yip, just leave them in the oven.  All on their lonesome. And they will just hang out, getting light and crispy and airy.

They are so delicate and light but absolutely packed with flavour.

New favourite cookie.

Guilt-free chocolate mousse with boysenberry jelly

Fact: This chocolate mousse has no cream in it. 

I know right? Mind blowing.

There had been a lot of water cooler chatter about chocolate mousse recipes at work in the last little bit.  Debs had been trialling out chocolate mousse recipes for dinner parties and the lovely Shanti had recently made the Hervé This Chocolate and Water Mousse.  I had chocolate mousse on my brain.

I wasn't brave enough to tackle the chocolate and water mousse (maybe next time) but it did set me on the track to find a not-so-sinful-but-still-decadent chocolate mousse recipe.

Enter the celebrated Raymond Blanc OBE and his Chocolate Mousse Maman Blanc.

If at first you don't succeed: Guilt-free Oreo Chocolate Mousse Tart

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm ~ Winston Churchill

Recently my in-laws decided to go vegan.

Whereas I am very happily non-vegan.

I unabashedly love all things creamy and cheesy and can't help but be skeptical of vegan recipes that say they are just as good as the full cream versions.  Cream, cream cheese and butter, makes all things luscious and delicious.  I always find myself poo-pooing vegan recipes, I mean how could a soy/nut alternative be anywhere near as good?  And how reliable are the tastebuds of someone used to vegan fare when comparing to decadently delicious dairy equivalents?

But to accommodate my in-laws' new diet, I've ventured into the weird and wacky world of vegan dessert making.  Unfortunately, I didn't hit the ground running.  In fact, it was a big fat vegan FAIL.  I made a vegan lemon cheesecake that stubbornly wouldn't set and tasted like a lemony cashew nut milkshake.  Not quite the "tastes just like cream cheese" decadent dessert the recipe promised.

{lemon cheesecake FAIL}

But instead of being put off, it made me more determined to try out more recipes to get that elusive vegan victory.

And sweet sweet victory came in the form of this Guilt-free Oreo Chocolate Mousse Tart - a chocolate cream pie with a secret ingredient.

Peanut butter & chocolate chip cookies and when diets go bad

Everything in moderation.  Including moderation. ~ Unknown

Maybe it's something to do with eating really healthily for the last little bit to fit into my wedding dress or maybe it's to do with the self restraint required for not eating cookies for the whole of Lent but in the last week I've been back up in Auckland, I've basically eaten my weight in food.  I'm eating like it's going out of fashion.

A mere 3 weeks before my wedding and I've gone from a Wedding Diet to a See Food And Eat It Diet.

I kid you not, in the last week we've eaten at Sri Mahkota, Sun World, Canton Cafe, and Muse and at each and every meal I've eaten until it hurt to move: slow braised pork belly, steamed garlic prawns, beef brisket noodle soup, crispy fried chicken, soy honey lamb chops, shallots chicken, four seasons beans.  While the rest of the table are already clutching their bellies in fullness, I'd still be shoveling food in my mouth.  Need a dish finished off? No worries, pass it to Nessie.

Not to mention the pies-ing I've been doing at home: I've single-handedly demolished a whole 1.5 kilograms of greek yoghurt with a whole bottle of kithul treacle from Sri Lanka, made and eaten a whole stack of cinnamon oat pancakes smothered in golden syrup and then a massive batch of butter chicken and hoovered up almost half a batch of these Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They're gluten free, so simple to make you could make them with one hand tied behind your back and SO addictive you too will have trouble not eating all the dough even before it hits the oven.

Who ate all the cookies in the cookie jar? Nessie ate all the cookies in the cookie jar.

Oh self restraint, why have you abandoned me???