The Best Ice-cream in Christchurch!

Mandy’s baby: roasted plum (from their garden) and cinnamon oat crumble. 
Belgium milk chocolate and marshmallow.

Dark chocolate and sea-salt sorbet. Vegan and delishasssss!

Coconut and black sesame seed. It’s vegan everybody! And my new favorite. Life is so sweet.

I was so good you guys! Just look at these teeny tiny scoops. Plus, I think me eating the ice-cream is great advertisement, don’t you think? Here we have three vegan coconut-cream based ice-creams: coconut, blueberry and vanilla, coconut and dark chocolate, and coconut and black sesame seed. Send help!

Figure Out Who You Are Then Do It On Purpose

See! We and Prince of Persia really DO share the same tablecloth! PS if there’s one advice I can give for making perfect pancakes, it is using a non-stick crepe maker. THIS one in specific. It has been and continues to be, my most prized possession – after the yellow rose Soroosh gave me on our first date. 
My dear friend and follower, Randy yesterday commented to say she misses Akiko, Lifa and Ozzy. Well, lookie here! Look who is thinking of me! Thanks guys, my heart is bursting.

The Origin (95 Westminster Street) is a new entirely vegan CHCH eatery. And, it is hands-down, nothing short of amazing! The food and the coffee, oh my. You’ve been warned. I can’t wait to go again. In fact, I’m gonna go today. 
Bet you’ve never taken a #muffinselfie. Or have you?

Oopsie. Must use bigger oven. Of course, my mother told me off for this. I did not try to argue that it was her who suggested and by suggested I mean forced me to use the toaster oven for my baking experiments in hope of using less electricity in the first place.

Combine the following in a large mixing bowl, 3 free-range eggs, 1/4 cup runny honey, 1/2 cup natural yoghurt, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 ripe banana, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar. Mix well, then gently sift in 1 cup buckwheat flour, 1 cup almond meal, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp cardamom, 1 tsp baking soda, a large handful of chopped walnuts and 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries, then mix thoroughly. Drop the mixture in to 12 greased muffin tins. Bake at 180 C for about 15 minutes or, until an inserted fork inserted comes out clean. Yummy yummy.

Tokyo Had Everything But You

A rainy summer festival.

Senso-ji temple.

My lucky fortune – now ain’t that the truth? I had a really hard time living in the Japanese country side and working in their education system but now, apparently (hopefully) all that’s gone.

A pancake/pikelete thingy majig filled with anko (sweet red bean paste) and matcha (green tea) ice-cream.

A maid cafe waitress hoping for business.

This is Akihabara. A popular Tokyo district mostly famous for its many electronic stores.

Ramen. 
I really enjoyed this colourful district and I kept thinking how much my father (the ex electrician) would also.

Mini vegan cheesecakes

Spot the bear!


There she is!!!

Finally, I made my first vegan cheesecakes in Japan and since I don’t have a food processor here, I used my $20 blender (slowly/cautiously) and guess what? It worked…wonders!

crust:
1 cup of raisins (cos dates are expensive as shizz)
2 cups of raw walnuts

“cheese”:
1 1/2 cups of raw cashews (soaked for 4 hours)
1/2 cup full-fat coconut milk
1/3 cup coconut oil (melted)
1 tsp pure vanilla essence
1/2 cup pure maple syrup

topping:
Whatever your little (sorry, BIG) heart desires – I used homemade blueberry syrup

First, blitz crust ingredients together in a food processor or, if you’re feeling lucky, a shitty blender until mixture starts coming together.

Using your fingers, carefully smoosh crust mixture evenly into a greased silicon 6 slot muffin tray.

Wash your food processor then process all of the filling ingredients together for about 5ish minutes or until mixture becomes nice and creamy, then distribute evenly on top of crust mixture.

That’s it! Cooking time finished! Now all you have to do is pop em into a freezer.

For best results, freeze overnight or for those of you that just can’t wait, 4-5 hours should do the trick.

To finish, top with fresh fruit or something equally instagramable/delicious.

Allow 10-12 minutes of thawing time or eat frozen if you just can’t wait!

Mini Guilt-Free Nutella Cheesecakes

Because anything “Nutella” is so damn necessary. And, because these are so freakin’ delicious.

I’m all about that base:
1 cup regular dates (cos medijool are expensive as f***)
1 cup raw hazelnuts
2 tbsp raw cacao powder
1 tbsp water

Filling:
2 cups raw cashews (soaked in water for 1-2 hours)
1/3 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup light unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup cacao powder

Place base ingredients in a food processor and whizz away until mixture starts coming together.

Using your fingers, carefully smoosh base mixture into a greased silicon muffin tray then pop in freezer to set.

Wash your food processor then process all of the filling ingredients (EXCEPT THE CACAO POWDER) together for about 5 minutes or until nice and creamy.

Set half of this mixture aside.

Add the cacao powder and whizz until combined – you should now have one vanilla and one chocolate mixture.

First distribute the vanilla mixture evenly among the muffin tins and after, the chocolate mixture.

For best results, freeze overnight or for those of you that just can’t wait, 4-5 hours should do the trick.

To finish, top with a Ferrero Rocher. Because girl (and boy), you deserve it! Plus, what’s life without a little contradiction?

PS  just to give you a little idea of just how much betterforyou these little cakes are, allow me to compare them to Nigella Lawson’s nutella cheesecake recipe. The following ingredients are what Nigella’s cheesecake is made up of: digestive biscuits, salted butter, nutella, toasted hazelnuts, cream cheese and icing sugar and what did we just use? dates, raw nuts, light unsweetened coconut milk, coconut oil (probably the only remotely “unhealthy” ingredient) unprocessed cacao powder and pure honey! Hence why we all deserve a Ferrero Rocher, or ten!

Foodporn and an Announcement

So I have some pretty exciting news… today, I finally created an I Accidently Ate The Whole Thing Facebook page! So, if you ‘like’ it (hint hint hint…HINT) you’ll be able to have even more access to my recipes, reviews and words (not sure if that’s a good thing for you, or not). Nevertheless,  to celebrate, here’s an image of my most favourite FULL FAT guilty pleasure: (from left to right) chilli chocolate, lemon curd custard and boysenberry custard filled DONUTS (is there a better word in the english language?! Perhaps; pancakes) which are available every Saturday from the Riccarton House Farmers Market (GO GET SOME). Oh mama, my mouth is watering just thinking about them. Last time I bit into one of these plump babies my whole front got covered in icing sugar! And the fact that I was wearing a black blouse didn’t help either! As much as I love my healthy eating (jokes, I just don’t want to get fat), I think it’s really important to occasionally treat yourself (emphasis on occasionally). So go on, indulge, your tastebuds will love you for it, your jeans; not so much.