PISTACHIO & WHITE CHOCOLATE CAKE

One of my favourite foods ever is pistachio. I love nuts in general, but pistachio has a special place in my heart. A while ago (as in, many weeks ago when I was still wearing shorts and going to the beach), my friend and I felt like baking. After browsing Pinterest, we decided to bake a Pistachio and White Chocolate cake. Yes, it tasted as good as it sounds. 

I’m not going to dwell on because I know all you want to do is read how to make this bit of heaven. So here it is!

Ingredients

• 220g unsalted butter
• 220g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1tsp baking powder
• 100ml milk
• 50g chopped pistachios
• 50g white chocolate
• 1tsp vanilla extract

For the icing:

• 150g white chocolate
• 150g softened unsalted butter
• 150g icons sugar
• 2 drops vanilla extract
• Pistachios for decoration

How to

Start by preheating the oven to 200˚C and line two cake tine (of similar or preferably same size).

Cream the butter and sugar together and add the eggs, making sure everything is well mixed. Add the flour, baking powder and milk and wick until it has a creamy texture. Add the pistachios and the white chocolate bits and mix. 

Then divide the mixture between the two tins and bake at 180˚C for half an hour. Once it’s done, leave it at room temperature to cool down.

For the icing:

Cream the butter and icing sugar and then add the white chocolate (melted). Mix very well until it looks even and has a creamy texture.

Once the cakes are cool, spread the icing on one cake and then place the second one on top. Spread what you have left of the icing on top and garnish with some pistachios.

AUTUMN & HALLOWEEN IN NOTTING HILL | OUT AND ABOUT

Notting Hill is undoubtedly one of London's most famous neighbourhoods - the colourful houses, the vintage cutlery at Portobello Market, the street food and the quirky little shops. Anyone who ever steps in London is probably going to visit Notting Hill, and there's no wonder why.

I recently went for brunch to Farmacy with my friend Amita and after indulging on some healthy and delicious Mexican Bowl and Florentine Eggs, we decided to walk around Notting Hill. There's no better place to get some dreamy autumnal photos, specially if Halloween is just around the corner! 

Massive spiders on Mini Coopers, brown leaves falling onto Range Rovers and living rooms with massive chandeliers and grand pianos with views to gardens covered in spider's net, skeletons and pumpkins - that's what you'll find there around this time of the year, just take a look at some of these beautiful photos I snapped last weekend! 

CHICKPEA CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

I'll be the first one to say that, as much as I love a good chickpea salad, I do think it's a bit weird to use them in desserts. But after seeing a few recipes online and people raving about it, I decided to give it a go and test it myself. After all, who can say no to healthy cookies? 

I loved them, my family loved them, my friends loved them. Everyone loved them, even those who are not a fan of my healthy baking. 

So, even if you don't usually are one to try healthy desserts you should give this a try. They are soft, sweet and do not taste like chickpeas. Trust me. 

Ingredients

1 can (15oz) of cooked and drained chickpeas

1/2 cup brown sugar 

1/2 cup wholewheat flour

2 tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil

Chocolate chips to taste

How to

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.

Start by cooking and draining the chickpeas. Using a food processor, process the chickpeas, vanilla extract, olive oil, salt and baking powder until it's smooth.

In a medium bowl, add the flour and the sugar. Fold until everything is mixed. Finally, add the chocolate chips and mix. You can also add nuts or dried fruit, or basically anything you like in cookies.

On a lined baking sheet, scoop the dough and flatten the cookies a bit using wet fingers as the cookies won't expand much by themselves. 

Bake at 180 degrees celsius for about 20-25 min, until the top of the cookies begins to crack and the edges are dry to touch.  

OUT AND ABOUT: 24 HRS IN MENORCA

It seems like all I do lately is waking up at ridiculous times, but it’s always worth it. Last Wednesday, I had to get up at 3:15AM to go to the harbour and take the ferry to Menorca which, for this of you who don’t know, is a little island near Mallorca in the Balearic Islands (Spain). The journey was only about 2 hours and it was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen as we got to watch the sun rise from behind Menorca. 

We took a bus to Ferreries, where we spent the morning. There we joined the town festivities which revolve around horses. Riders, dressed in 19th-century costume, exhibit the horse’s abilities accompanied by traditional music. Unlike 90% of the population, I am not an animal lover at all so I wasn’t too excited about that. However, I did have a great time and it wasn’t as boring as I was expecting.  

At around noon, we took a bus to Ciutadella where we spent the rest of the day. After eating one of my favourite dishes ever, Caldereta de Marisco which could be described as a seafood stew, we walked around the city and explored its streets. We also visited the pier, which we accidentally found. On our way back to the ferry, we stumbled upon a little beach which I think looked very cool because it almost looked like a river rather than the sea. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to swim as we didn’t want to miss the ferry. We didn’t visit any of the stunning beaches in Menorca because they are very similar to the ones we have in Mallorca but if you ever decide to go and you like crystal clear turquoise water (who doesn’t), you should definitely go to one! 

OUT AND ABOUT: SUNSET AT THE BEACH

Waking up at 5:30AM is no fun. But when it is to go to the beach to watch the sun rise with your friends, then it doesn’t seem as bad. I love pretty skies and, in fact, I have stayed up a few nights after a night out just to see the sun rise from my terrace. So when we talked about missing on a lay in to go to the beach very early in the morning, I was 100% down.

It was weird seeing that beach so empty as, during the day, it is absolutely packed and you can barely walk without steeping on someone’s towel. We got there at about 6:40AM and sat down to have some coffee and biscuits whilst the sun was rising.  I had seen many sunsets from that same spot before but they had been nowhere near as beautiful as that sunrise. As you will see in the pictures, it was breathtaking and something worth doing if you live near the beach or are on holiday.

We stayed there until about 8AM, when the sun was completely up and shining. I don't think I had ever taken pictures that early in the day - as I am usually in bed or rushing to uni - but the lighting, oh the lighting, it was incredible. The most ordinary picture looked like straight out of a travel magazine, and I did feel like I was in some tropical island in the Caribbean or Hawaii.

OUT AND ABOUT: FRANCE, PYRENEES, NAVARRA AND THE BASQUE COUNTRY

I’ve been a bit MIA these past few days, I was away for about a week and when I got back needed a two days to recover from a rather exhausting trip. If you’ve been following me on Twitter and Instagram you would know I’ve been in the South of France and North of Spain this past week. I took a flight with my dad and my sister  to Bilbao where I spent one day before taking a bus to France - where the adventure started.

We did a bit of the famously known Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James in English). If you don’t know what it is, it’s a pilgrimage route which finishes in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (northwestern Spain). It used to be a spiritual route and, though it’s not my case, many people still do it for that same reason. 

After spending the morning in the picturesque French town  of St. Jean-Pied-de-Port - very small but so beautiful -  we started our four day hike and walked about 7km to a refugee in the middle of the Pyrenees. The views of massive green valleys were incredible and breathtaking. 

The following day we walked about 18km to Roncesvalles - i.e. I freaking climbed the Pyrenees, how cool am I. It was hard but not as bad as I was expecting, even though the extreme fogginess, the rain and the wind didn’t exactly help. I was a bit gutted when I realised I had missed the Spanish-French border and didn’t get my picture…I guess I’ll have to go back. 

After resting for the rest of the day and eating A LOT of food to regain some energy, we had a somewhat good night sleep and woke up ready to walk 22km up to a small town in Navarra called Zubiri where I got tendinitis and two bad knees. Despite these small complications I still enjoyed the town and the following day walked another 24km up to Pamplona. On our way there we stopped at a small restaurant in a town where I had an amazing squid and prawn burger which gave me food poisoning so, sadly, I didn’t get to walk around Pamplona much.

Finally, we took a bus to San Sebastián from Pamplona and spent our last day there before taking plane to go back home. I had been to San Sebastian before but I didn't  remember how beautiful it was - the perfect flower arrangements in every single street, the cute unique boutiques, the warm but not too hot weather, etc. Such a beautiful city! 

And, ladies and gents, this was my 6 day break from hot and sweaty Mallorca, it was so nice to spend a few days in a colder weather! It was a bit different to my usual holidays but I had so much fun and it was cool to visit so many different cities and small towns.