This bowl has been my lunch for the last four days… I may have even eaten it for lunch and dinner yesterday! It’s just that good.

The idea of sweet potatoes mixed with olives, fennel and kale may not seem totally conventional, but it’s really one of the best combinations of flavours and textures that I’ve found in a while. The sweet, tender nature of the potatoes contrasts perfectly with the salty, ever so slightly chewy olives, the crispy kale and the crunchy, lime infused slithers of tangy fennel. Once everything is mixed together with the quinoa it’s just heaven, so unbelievably delicious and wonderfully energising. You’ll be jumping up and down after you eat it! You also feel like a total goddess while you eat it as you know that you’re taking it such an amazing amount of goodness with each bite, which is so awesome.

Everything in the bowl is bursting with goodness, but the real winner here is Kale, which is such a powerhouse of nutrition, it’s really the king of all vegetables. Did you know that per calorie it has more iron than beef and more calcium than milk? As well as being loaded up with vitamins K, A & C, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids and fibre. You can’t really get much better than that! Really its the best support for every system in your body, as well as your hair and skin. I’ve even been putting kale in my morning smoothies to ensure that I eat it everyday.

The other veggie here which I don’t talk about all the time is fennel. It’s such a delicious vegetable, and one that is not enjoyed enough, as it makes an awesome addition to any meal, while also being a fantastic source of anti-inflammatory phytonutrients. It even contains particular compounds which have been shown to prevent the occurrence of cancer. Most people tend to roast their fennel but I prefer mine raw and marinated overnight with lime and olive oil. This process softens the fennel, leaving it slightly crunchy but soft enough to devour, while also infusing it with a tangy deliciousness. If you haven’t tried it like this then you’re in for such a treat! It is seriously divine, everyone always loves it, especially as it’s so nice to get something new and unexpected into your diet. It also lasts about five days like this if it’s stored in an air tight box in the fridge, so you can marinate two or three bulbs at once, which only takes a few minutes, and then leave them so that they’re ready to add to any quinoa, salad etc over the week. It’s perfect. I do the same with my sweet potatoes and quinoa too, so that I always have a meal like this ready to go when I’m hungry and busy. This way a meal like this only takes 5 minutes to throw together so you won’t be tempted to stray to something unhealthy!

Serves 2

- 1 large sweet potato

- 1 cup of quinoa

- 2 fennel

- 5 kale leaves

- 1 cup of pitted black olives

- 2 juicy limes, 3 if they’re not super juicy

- olive oil

- cinnamon

- paprika

- rosemary

- salt

The night before marinate the fennel, Start by slicing off the spiky top and the very bottom edge, then cut the rest into slithers. Place it in a big tupperware box and cover with the juice of two limes, salt and olive oil – there should be enough liquid in there from the juice and oil to ensure that each fennel slice is coated. Then leave the box in the fridge to soften.

Heat the oven to 180C. Then cut the sweet potato in half, into slices and then into bite sized cubes. Place these in a baking dish with olive oil, salt, cinnamon, paprika and rosemary – stirring everything well with your hands to ensure that all sides of each cube is coated in deliciousness. Then bake for 30 minutes, stirring them once or twice during this time.

While the sweet potatoes bake cook the quinoa.

Chop the kale leaves into bite sized pieces and two or three minutes before the sweet potatoes are cooked add the leaves to the top of the baking dish with a little extra oil and salt.

Once the kale is crisping up remove the baking tray and mix everything together with the quinoa, fennel and olives. Enjoy!

My favourite summer salad is made from roasted aubergine (eggplant), sun dried tomatoes, rocket (arugula) and pine nuts. It is so delicious, but not quite hearty enough for these cold wintery days. So I decided to tweak it a bit, add in some pasta and see what happened. Well it was awesome! The sun dried tomatoes simmer down when cooked with the plum tomatoes, basil, salt, olive oil and courgettes to make a wonderfully rich, chunky sauce, which is enhanced by the tender, roasted squares of aubergine, the crunchy toasted pine nuts and the ever so slightly bitter rocket. It’s really a perfect easy supper that will fill you up nicely and it literally takes twenty minutes, it’s really a no fuss situation, which I always love!

One of the things I love most about this dish is the eggplant, it’s a vegetable that I really don’t eat enough but always love. I love how tender and almost spongey and gooey it gets when baked so that it just melts in your mouth, enhancing every delicious bite. Yum. It’s also, like all veggies, fantastically healthy too as it’s filled with fibre, disease fighting antioxidants, and even cooler this vegetable has been shown to helped prevent cellular damage in the brain! These awesome properties are of course made even better by all the goodness that you’ll be getting from the tomatoes, zucchini and rocket too, as well as the fibrous pasta and protein rich pine nuts. All of which give you a great excuse to have seconds of this delicious pasta!

Serves 2

- 1 aubergine

- 1 courgette/zucchini

- 10 plum tomatoes

- 2/3 of a cup sun dried tomatoes

- 2 handfuls of rocket/arugula

- 1/2 of a cup of pine nuts

- 1/2 a jalapeño pepper

- fresh basil leaves

- olive oil

- salt

- pasta of choice (I like brown rice or quinoa gluten free pastas)

Start by slicing the aubergiends into bite sized cubes, then sprinkle salt all over them to allow them to sweat – this is important for their flavour as without this step they’ll have a slightly nasty bitter taste. You’ll literally see sweat beads forming on their surfaces, which after about fifteen minutes you can wash off. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Once the aubergines have sweated and been rinsed, place them in a baking tray with olive oil, salt and a sprinkling of dried herbs – I like oregano and rosemary. Bake for twenty minutes, stirring them once.

Then, slice the tomatoes into eighths and the zucchini into thin half moons, placing them into a sauce pan with a handful of torn of basil leaves, the sun dried tomatoes, jalapeño pepper, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Allow the pan to simmer for about 10-15 minutes, while you cook your pasta.

Just before the aubergines are ready add the pine nuts to their baking tray and bake for a couple of minutes, until they begin to slightly brown. Then mix them together with the veggie sauce and the drained pasta, adding the rocket as you put the pasta into bowls. Then eat and enjoy!

I’ve now totally transitioned into having a smoothie every day with my breakfast, to the point that it feels weird getting up without one. I just absolutely adore them. Drinking a beautiful rainbow glass of goodness like this makes getting up in the morning a million times easier, I literally jump out of bed to make mine because it tastes so good, so much more delicious than any cereal or toast, and so much more filling and satisfying too. A glass of this also makes you feel incredible, the sugar in the fruit really helps you wake up and energizes you. It may sound strange but I also think that making such a consciously healthy choice every morning is incredibly empowering, it’s amazing to take charge of your body and your health before you’ve made any other decisions as it really puts you in such a positive frame of mine. If you make such a healthy choice for breakfast I can guarantee you’ll feel pretty awesome about yourself all day and therefore much more likely to enjoy being healthy, instead of straying towards the chocolate! I would so recommend trying to incorporate a smoothie into your wake up routine every day for a week and see how you feel afterwards, I’m sure you’ll be a total addict within just a few days! Don’t worry though, they’re the easiest, fastest breakfast too – you literally throw everything into a blender, blend for 2 minutes, rinse your blender and you’re done! Five minutes maximum for everything.

This particular smoothie is my go-to at the moment, I do change it up every few weeks and get hooked on a new flavour combination but this one has been my number one for the last month and my love of it seems to just grow stronger everyday! The combination of banana, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries is, as you can imagine, sweet, juicy and delicious! Together they create an awesome fruity flavour, which is seriously enhanced by the unbelievably rich fruity essences of the acai powder, meaning that the veggie taste of the kale goes totally unnoticed, so much so that you probably wouldn’t even realize that the kale was there, I’ve even tried it with broccoli too and it was still heavenly. So you can drink all the kale’s amazing goodness without tasting it, it’s a real win-win situation. What about all my other many additions – chia seeds, hemp, oats, ground flaxseed, cinnamon and coconut oil? There’s too much goodness there to get through in one post! The cinnamon is there for flavour as it really compliments the berries adding extra deliciousness to each sip, while also helping to regulate your blood sugar, setting you up nicely for a day of balanced energy. The ground flax and oats adds an incredible boost of dietary fibre, which aids your detoxification system, while also keeping you full for hours. The acai berries add more antioxidants than you could possibly imagine, as well as healthy omega fats, amino acids and dietary fibre, helping your body more than anything else to ward of disease, while the coconut oil adds heaps of antibacterial properties and the chia adds a bucket of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Hemp adds to all of these life giving properties, boosting the fibre content, while also adding an incredible amount of wonderful plant protein – along with quinoa, hemp is one of the only sources of complete vegan/vegetarian protein so it’s a pretty awesome addition to our diets. It’s a particularly easy protein to digest too, much easier than something like soy, and two tablespoons will give you over 5 grams of protein! After drinking all of this you will really be ready for anything!

Makes 1 large glass

- 1 ripe banana

-1/3 of a cup of blueberries

- 1/3 of a cup of raspberries

-1/3 of a cup of strawberries

- 1/2 a cup of kale leaves (remove the hard parts of the stalks)

- 1/4 of a cup of almond milk or water

- a handful of gluten free oats

- 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed (easy to digest that the seeds)

- 1 tablespoon of hemp protein powder

- 1 tablespoon of chia seeds

- 1 tablespoon of acai

- 1 tablespoon of coconut oil (optional)

- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon

This might seem like a long list, but it’s not as complicated or challenging as it looks! I keep all the ingredients (except the fruit & kale) in a cupboard above my blender and just throw it all in together every morning, really its no hassle at all, don’t worry!

For anyone in the UK Raw Living is my favourite acai & hemp brand:

http://www.planetorganic.com/raw-living-acai.html

http://www.planetorganic.com/raw-living-hemp-protein-powder.html

SImply place all the ingredients in a blender together, removing the banana form the peel first of course, then blend into a delicious mix. Depending how liquid you like your smoothie then you may want to add a little more water.

If you’re craving a crunch then sprinkle some extra chia seeds, oats and some hemp seeds on the top.

Then sip, love and enjoy – you’ll feel like a goddess all day! I’ve been drinking mine alongside my daily hot water and lemon and a bowl of almonds, dried figs & blueberries – too delicious!

If asked what my favourite foods in the world were the list would be: sweet potatoes, dates, cacao, raw brownies and avocado. So it seems only natural to try and combine at least four of the five in some way to create something insanely awesomely, which is exactly what I did in these sweet potato brownies. I have to admit that when I made these I was beyond excited, like really way too over excited. I was jumping around a lot, making a lot of ‘mmmmm… delicious… wow… these are outrageous… can you believe it’ type noises! Anyway I was so excited that I told everyone that would listen about my new creation – but the response was a little mixed, most people seemed to think the idea of making dessert from a vegetable was too bizarre and maybe I’d taken my healthy baking a step too far! But I absolutely promise you that I haven’t and that you will adore these, it is impossible not to. They are the sweetest, gooiest, softest, most moist, chocolatey brownies ever. And even better they make you feel incredible as guess what they only contain six totally natural, totally unrefined, absolutely healthy ingredients! Sweet potatoes, almonds, buckwheat, dates, raw cacao and a little agave. How crazy is that! The mixture is also so heavenly that you will want to eat the whole thing with a spoon, seriously – just the mix of pureed sweet potatoes and dates is enough to send you straight to food heaven. It is unreal. Licking the bowl is also one of the highlights of being vegan as you don’t have to worry about getting sick from the raw eggs! Anyway I am so head over heels in love with this recipe and have so many plans right now for this mix of ingredients – they’ll be sweet potato muffins, scones, cakes and pancakes coming your way very soon!

Just because these taste insanely sweet and decadent doesn’t mean they’re not loaded with goodness though. Sweet potatoes are incredible: they’s bursting with nutritional goodness with all their antioxidants, and their anti-inflammatory properties, as well as being awesome blood sugar-regulators. Each cup contains an almost unrivaled amount of  vitamin A, with more than four times your daily need of this antioxidant boosting vitamin, which is essential for strengthening your body’s immunity against infection. Their bright colour also doses you up on anti-inflammatories which have been shown to reduce inflammation on the brain and nerve tissue. Each serving also contains lots of wonderful fibre, which gives each brownies a  ‘slow burning’ quality, meaning their energy is used up much more slowly than low-fibre carbohydrates – like normal brownies, so you’ll be fuller, more energised and more satisfied for way longer! So if you needed an excuse to eat brownies then here it is! They’re healthy! Don’t forget that raw cacao is also a superfood as it is such an insanely rich source of antioxidants, one of the best in the world, as well as being packed with a number of other beneficial nutrients: manganese, which helps oxygenate the blood; magnesium, which helps maintain healthy bodily nerves, muscles and bones; and sulphur, which builds strong nails and hair, and promotes beautiful skin.

Makes 9 brownies

- 2 medium to large sweet potatoes

- 2/3 of a cup of ground almonds

- 1/2 a cup of buckwheat flour (brown rice flour will also work)

- 14 medjool dates

- 4 tablespoons of raw cacao

- 3 tablespoons of agave syrup

- a pinch of salt

Start by pre-heating the oven to 180C, then peel the sweet potatoes. Cut them into chunks and place into a saucepan of boiling water for about twenty minutes, until they become really soft.

Once they are perfectly soft and beginning to fall apart drain them. Next, add them to a food processor with the pitted dates – this will form one of the sweetest, creamiest, most delicious mixes ever!

Put the remaining ingredients into a bowl, before mixing in the sweet potato date combination. Stir well.

Place into a lined baking dish and cook for about twenty minutes, until you can pierce the brownie cake with a fork bringing it out dry. Remove the tray and allow it to cool for about ten minutes – this is really important as it needs this time to stick together! Remove the brownies from the tray, leaving it another few minutes before cutting them into squares – then dig in and enjoy!

Everyone loves pizza, it’s one of those deliciously comforting foods that always makes people happy. It’s actually one of the only foods that still sometimes instills food envy in me. You know when you see someone eating a beautifully crispy slice that’s covered in juicy tomato sauce, fresh basil and mozzarella. Mmmm, it looks so good. Unfortunately, despite looking and smelling so good, the vast majority of pizza is anything but healthy and they’re never refined gluten, dairy & sugar free! So as with so many things, it’s best to make your own. I’ve experimented with so many different bases over the last few years, and this one, together with my cauliflower crust, is my favourite. It’s really really delicious and so wonderfully simple. The dough doesn’t need rolling or kneading or anything complicated, all you have to do is simply soak the quinoa overnight and then blend it with salt and dried herbs. It’s awesome.

The base comes out nice and thin too, so it’s crunchy but still doughy enough in the middle, which for me is the perfect pizza crust formula. I love mine layered with tomato puree, chopped cherry tomatoes and fresh basil and then topped with artichoke hearts, black olives and rocket (arugula). Wow it tastes so insanely good! You truly feel like you’re eating ‘normal’ pizza! Of course it’s also pretty fun to gobble up a whole pizza without having to think of the potentially negative consequences, either for your waist line or for your health, as you’re just eating a bowl of quinoa! Quinoa is so easy to digest, so energising and so healthy. It’s a complete protein, just like chicken, beef etc, so is a wonderful addition to any vegan or vegetarian diet as it contains all the essential amino acids needed for a healthy body. It also contains almost twice the amount of fibre as other grains, as well as being high in iron, magnesium and calcium. So now you can eat insanely delicious pizza and feel like a goddess, how amazing is that?!

Makes one 8 inch pizza:

- 3/4 of a cup of quinoa (soaked for about eight hours)

- 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

- 2 teaspoons of mixed herbs, I used herbs de provence and oregano

- a sprinkling of chilli flakes

- salt

For toppings I used:

- 2 tablespoons of organic tomato puree

- a dozen cherry tomatoes

- a handful of artichokes

- a handful of pitted black olives

- a handful of rocket (arugula)

Soak the quinoa overnight or for about eight hours in water . The best way to do this is put the quinoa in a larger bowl and cover it in water, make sure that it’s covered by a few cm’s. Then leave this to one side.

Once you’re ready to make the pizza, pre-heat the oven to 190C. Then drain any water left in the quinoa bowl, before putting the quinoa into a food processor with the apple cider vinegar, herb, chilli flakes and salt. Blend for a few minutes until a smooth dough forms, it should look a bit like pancake mix.

Line the bottom of a pizza dish or cake pan with olive oil and pour the mix in, then bake for about 15- 20 minutes, until the base is firm – it cooks really pretty quickly though.

Remove and add your topping, either place it back in the oven for a few minutes to warm them or enjoy your toppings raw! I like my tomatoes and tomato puree heated and the rest of my ingredients raw. Delicious!

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, I just love it. I find that it’s so important to start the day with something delicious, satisfying and filling and yet really healthy. That’s why I love huge glasses of rainbow smoothies filled with a million different flavours and textures and bursting with goodness! I often add granola to my smoothies, but sometimes I feel like changing it up even more, so I make overnight smoothie oats, like this. They’re awesome and the easiest thing in the world if you’re after a super speedy on-the-go breakfast – you can even make these in a plastic cup and take them with you!

The blend of mango and banana is just divine, it tastes like happiness and summer! Whilst that might sound ridiculous, the wonderfully fresh, crazily sweet and perfectly light nature of the blend really does recall those feelings, which is so happy. The consistency is also awesome, it’s just like yoghurt – so thick and creamy, which means that when combined with the oats the whole thing beings to resemble bircher muesli – except that I think this version tastes way more delicious thanks to the mango, but the idea is quite similar. I also like to add ground flaxseed to the mango blend for extra goodness as it gives such a incredible burst of fibre and omega-3′s without changing the taste at all. In fact, the whole thing tastes more like a dessert than a healthy breakfast! You would never know how good it is for you, even though each glass is bursting with awesome nutrition. Mango’s are wonderful fruits, filled with fibre, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, while oats are some of the best complex carbohydrates around as they contain a particularly awesome type of fibre which keeps you full for hours, lowers blood cholesterol and stabilises blood sugar. Chia seeds are also pretty incredible – did you know that gram for gram they contain more calcium than milk, more potassium than bananas, more iron than spinach and more omega-3 acids than wild salmon?! So a glass of this oaty, mango goodness will fuel you up perfectly for any day!

Serves 2

- 1 cup of gluten free oats

- 1 large mango

- 3 ripe banans

- 1/3 of  a cup of almond milk

- 4 tablespoons of chia seeds

- 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed

Simply peel the mango and two of the bananas and place them in a food processor with the ground flaxseed and blend everything together into a smooth, creamy mix. Fill the bottom third of two glasses with this mango, banana goodness.

Put your oats in a bowl with the chia seeds and add the almond milk, stirring well. Then divide this mix in two and split it between the two cups. Layer the third banana in slices over this layer before topping the glasses up with the remaining mango mix.

Place the glasses in the fridge over night before enjoying for breakfast!

I never use to be a coconut girl, I wasn’t ever fully convinced on the flavour but recently I’ve become pretty obsessed with it and now I’m eating coconut with everything! I’m having a serious coconut love affair. It’s particularly awesome sprinkled on top of my morning smoothie alongside slithered almonds and raw cacao nibs – just incredible! Wow.

Anyway given my new love of coconut I realised that I needed to start incorporating it into my sweet treats. This particular recipe for raw coconut and cacao bites was one of my first and favourite coconut experiments. It turned out a million times better than I could have ever expected. They are seriously more incredible than anything, so good that they’re replaced my cravings for raw brownies, which is a huge deal as I’ve been making raw brownies several times a week for the past year! The coconut just adds the most incredible flavour to the cacao, making each bite so unbelievably delicious. The flavours really complement each other and the amounts used in the recipe means that both flavours remain deliciously subtle, yet still present and so awesomely sweet with an almost buttery texture thanks to the addition of cashew butter. They literally just melt in your mouth! They’re the perfect speedy snack, taking no more then five minutes to make, and you can keep them in your fridge all week to make sure that you always have a deliciously healthy snack around to sate those sweet cravings!

One of the most awesome things about these bites is that they’re also bursting with protein thanks to all the almonds and the cashew butter, so as well as sating your sweet tooth they’ll also fill you up, making you even less likely to reach for a chocolate bar. While the coconut will increase your energy levels as it contains a particular type of healthy fat that is very quickly converted into fuel for organ and muscle function, giving you instant energy to help you out of that mid-day slump. So you can enjoy your sweets knowing that your body will enjoy them too!

- 1 cup of desiccated coconut

- 1 cup of almonds

- 1/2 a dozen medjool dates

- 4 tablespoons of cashew butter

- 2 tablespoons of raw cacao

- 1 tablespoon of coconut oil

Start by putting the almonds and coconut in a food processor and blend for a minute or two, until a flour starts to form. Then add the cashew butter, coconut oil and cacao blending for a few seconds before slowly adding in the dates.

Continue to blend until everything has been combined together to form a sticky mixture. This mixture can then be rolled into balls and covered in more coconut and left in the fridge to firm up for an hour or alternately you can enjoy it with a spoon straight from a cup, or be like me and eat it straight from the blender! Either way you’ll love it! If you can resist not eating the whole mixture then keep the remaining bites in the fridge in a container.

My two favourite kitchen appliances are my food processor and my vegetable spiralizer. They’re both so important if you want to make healthy but delicious food. The processor is a pretty standard item but the spiralizer is a little less usual and if you don’t have one then you seriously need one! They’re really inexpensive, so easy to use and just so incredible! Seriously being able to make fresh vegetable spaghetti is unbelievable. Zucchini noodles are the main component of almost all my favourite meals and I really add them into everything. Their consistency is so like spaghetti its crazy, especially if you lightly sauté them.

This dish has been my favourite meal of the week, since Sunday I must have made it at least five times! It’s just so quick and easy yet so delicious, filling and satisfying. I think that’s the beauty of zucchini noodles – they’re really filling and it feels like you’re enjoying a bowl of pasta, except you feel wonderfully energised afterwards and you sneakily get in a wonderful portion of raw green veggie goodness without even realising it. This whole bowl is based around green goodness really and although it doesn’t taste like it, it really is unbelievably nutritious – kale, peas, avocado, zucchini, carrots, lime & mint – some of the most incredible ingredients in the world. They merge together to make such delicious flavours too. The avocado makes the sauce amazingly creamy and light while the peas add a deliciously sweet flavour that perfectly complements the freshness of the mint and the tanginess of the lime. The kale doesn’t add much, if anything, to the flavour of the dish but it’s there to boost health as it’s one of the most healthful ingredients ever. The carrot noodles are kind of in the same category as the kale – their sweetness is mostly masked by the sauce so you don’t really notice a difference between plain zucchini noodles and this mixed variety but carrots are wonderful for you so it’s absolutely worth adding them – they also add a beautiful rainbow dimension to the bowl thanks to their brilliant orange colour. I think you eat with your eyes first so I love my dishes to look beautiful and incredibly colourful.

I couldn’t recommend making this more, it takes no more than ten minute from start to finish, it’s so delicious, it will make you feel incredible and gives you six portions (if you add the tomatoes) of vegetables in one bowl! I’ve tried this on five different friends this week and each one was obsessed, so I can almost guarantee that you will be too!

Here’s the link to the spiralizer I use:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spiralz-Vegetable-Spiralizer/dp/B003NXR086

Serves 1

- 1 zucchini/courgette

- 1 carrot

- 1 cup of peas

- 1 ripe avocado

- a large handful of kale

- a handful of fresh mint

- a handful of pumpkin seeds

- 1 teaspoon of olive oil

- 1 lime

- salt

- optional: a handful of cherry tomatoes

Start by bringing the peas to the boil using cold water to begin with.

As the peas warm make the noodles before placing the mint, kale, avocado, olive oil and salt in a food processor. Blend this mix into a creamy mixture adding about three quarters of the drained peas once they are cooked.

Mix the pesto with the noodles topping the dish off with the pumpkin seeds and a few chopped cherry tomatoes.

If you’re less into raw food or after a warm dish then you can gently sauté the noodles with olive oil for a couple of minutes until they soften before stirring in the sauce for another minute.

As you may have realised sweet potatoes are one of my favourite foods in the world, I’m totally obsessed! I’ll eat them any which way – mashed, roasted in bite sized chunks, cut into fries, made into brownies, pancakes & muffins, boiled – just anything really. The thing I never used to do though is bake them whole, I’m really not sure why as it seems like such a logical way of cooking them, but for some reason it just never happened until this week. What a mistake that was though as baking them whole – just like a jacket potato – is seriously awesome. This is partly because it is so easy and fuss-free, you literally just throw them in the oven for an hour and they come out hot, squishy, sweet, tender and just all round incredible without you having to do a thing. Who knew deliciously healthy cooking could be quite so ridiculously easy?! The only hard part is deciding what to put on them, and believe me for a totally food obsessed person that is a big question! For me these toppings are just perfect. The brazil nut cheese adds the most incredible creaminess to every bite, while also adding a slight tanginess thanks to the lemon juice and an incredibly awesome herby flavour thanks to the blended rosemary – this addition of the rosemary really turns this nut cheese into something uniquely amazing that brings the awesomeness of the sweet potatoes to another level. So good that I was eating the cheese on its own straight out the blender with a spoon! The chilli sautéed mushrooms and broccoli then add an awesome meatiness to the plate, giving a whole new range of textures to make your mouth sing with happiness! It’s just a really awesome dish, so simple yet so satisfying with four rainbow portions of veggies but still so insanely easy to make, it really requires almost no effort. You’ll love it!

Did you know that eating brazil nuts is the best way to add lots of selenium to your diet? Selenium is a mineral that is essential for good health as it critical for proper thyroid function, as well as playing an important role in the functioning of the immune system and the body’s antioxidant  defence system, protecting cells and tissues from damaging molecules. On top of this each nut is also packed with awesome plant protein, copper,  magnesium, fibre and vitamin E , making them a fantastically nutritious and delicious addition to your diet.

For the sweet potatoes:

- 1 sweet potato per person

- brocoli

- chestnut mushrooms

- chilli salt

- olive oil

For the nut cheese:

Makes 1 bowl of cheese, enough for four

- 1 cup of brazil nuts

- 1/2 a cup of water

- 1 lemon

- 3 stalks of fresh rosemary

- 1 tablespoon of nutritonal yeast

- salt

Start by heating the oven to 200C, then pierce the sweet potato right through with a knife, place them on a baking tray and once the oven is hot pop them in.

They will take 45 minute to an hour to cook depending on their size and you really don’t need to do anything to them whilst they’re in the oven. After they’ve cooked for about 20-25 minutes make the nut cheese by simply adding all of its ingredients into a food processor and blending for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Then chop the broccoli florets into bite sized pieces and the peeled mushrooms into thin slices. Add the broccoli to the frying pan first with olive oil, a sprinkling of chilli flakes and salt. Allow the broccoli to cook for 4-5 minutes before adding the mushrooms – you may want to add a little extra olive oil to them.

Then, once the potatoes are cooked, slice them in half and pile high with all the delicious goodness! Enjoy!

Anyone who knew me before I changed my diet knows that along with chocolate, pick and mix candy and peanut butter and jam eaten with a spoon, yoghurt and granola was my favourite food. I ate it  all the time, it was my super easy, super lazy alternative to normal meals. So as you can image it wasn’t easy to give up, but like with everything else you see here I found an alternative. For me smoothie bowls topped with these banana and almond clusters are the ultimate replacement as they  have the same mix of sweet creaminess contrasted with delicious crunchiness. Even better, this combination actually tastes a million times better than any of my old store-brought variations. It’s so good that the thought of my morning bowl literally makes me bounce out of bed in the morning – it’s awesome! Of course it’s super healthy too. The clusters are made just from almonds, walnuts, oats, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds and they’re stuck together using mashed banana, almond butter and manuka honey. So they really are bursting with brilliant goodness with heaps of plant protein, omega 3 acids, vitamins and wonderful fibre filled complex carbohydrates to keep you full and energetic for hours! This combined with the fresh fruit and veg in my morning smoothie means I start my day on such a positive note, which I love. I’ve said it before but I really can’t stress enough the importance of making healthy choices first thing in the morning as they power you up for a strong, healthy day! Try making a batch of these clusters and add them to your morning smoothie for a week, I can guarantee that you’ll feel incredible by the end! They’re also the easiest thing to make and last for ages in an air tight container!

- 1 cup of almonds

- 1 cup of walnuts

- 1 cup of gluten free oats

- 1 cup of sunflower seeds

- 1 cup of pumpkin seeds

- 1 cup of flaxseeds

- 3 very ripe bananas

- 2 tablespoons of manuka honey

- 2 tablespoons of almond butter

For my favourite smoothie bowl:

- 1 ripe banana

- 1/2 a cup each of blueberries, strawberries and raspberries

- 1 handful of spinach

- 1 tablespoon of almond milk or water

Start by pre-heating the oven to 190C. Then place all the dry ingredients into a bowl.

In a separate bowl place the peeled bananas and mash them with a fork, before adding the honey and almond butter. Stir the three ingredients together so that they form a sticky paste.

Pour the paste over the dry ingredients mixing everything together so that they whole mixture sticks together. Then place this on a piece of baking paper layer over a baking tray and put in the oven. Allow to bake for about 25 minutes, until the clusters start to brown a little and become firm. Although half way through it’s best to take the tray out and sir them around a bit, otherwise the whole thing will stick together in one giant cluster!

Then allow to cool and store in an air tight container, enjoy!

I’m sorry for not posting any recipes last week – I went on holiday and took some time off from technology, which was amazing! I’m back now though, feeling totally recharged and bursting with a million new ideas for awesome recipes, including this one for a carrot, lentil and raisin salad tossed with quinoa, pint nuts and roasted butternut squash and mixed with an almond butter, lime and olive oil dressing. It may sound like a long title for a recipe, but trust me it’s super easy! It also makes for a perfect spring dish as it’s very light yet the squash adds a filling, satisfying texture to each bite and all the fibre and protein from the quinoa and lentils means each plateful actually really fills you up. The wow factor of the salad however lies in the inclusion of the raisins though – they just taste incredible. They’re soaked in warm water while everything else is cooked to make them so extraordinarily  sweet and juicy, allowing them to enhance the natural sweetness of the grated carrot and roasted squash while also creating the perfect contrast to the savoury crunch of the toasted pine nuts. It’s awesome. The dressing then brings everything together, adding a deliciously creamy factor to the whole thing that really allows each mouthful to melt in your mouth. I think you’ll all love this! If you’re running around all day it’s a super easy on-the-go lunch too as it’s so delicious cold so you can make it the night before. It will last for a few days in an air-tight container too.

I’d love to tell you more about the salad but I feel like I should share one more awesome thing about my holiday – I converted my whole house to vegan eating! They were all loving it. I think everyone was amazed about how good this kind of food can really taste. The craziest convert of all though was my dad, and it is a story really worth listening too! He’d done the Dukan Diet for eighteen months, which meant that he had literally barely touched a fruit of vegetable and instead ate almost exclusively animal protein – think starters made of hard boiled eggs and prawns and mains of chicken with a side of fish (ew!). Anyway as a result of this he’d developed the most aggressive acid reflux issues that could not be controlled by medication and he was feeling so unwell, so I persuaded him to be a gluten free, sugar free, chemical free vegan with me for 12 days. During this time not only did all the reflux issues disappear but he felt more energetic, super healthy and guess what, he lost 10 pounds without even trying! How crazy is that! He ate raw banoffee pie, my banana ice cream topped with dates & nuts, amazing wild rice rice salads, roasted sweet & normal potatoes, quinoa bowls, delicious roasted veggies, awesome carrot & zucchini noodles with cashew & pine nut pestos and a whole heap of other delicious things. There was no deprivation, just a deliciously healthy diet that absolutely satisfies every craving and keeps you bouncing with energy. It’s just amazing how food works as medicine. Anyway seeing this just confirmed to me how eating should be all about loving your body and ensuring that the food that you put into it is worthy of that love – you really are what you eat.

Serves 3:

(All measurements are for the raw ingredients)

- 1 cup of quinoa

- 4 carrots

- 1/2 a cup of lentils

- 1/2 a cup of raisins

- 1/2 of a cup of pine nuts

- 1 large butternut squash

- 1 juiced lime or 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

For the dressing:

- 1/4 of a cup of olive oil

- 2 tablespoons of almond butter

- 1 lime

- salt

Start by pre-heating the oven to 190C, then peel and cut the squash into bite size chunks. Place them on a baking tray drizzled with olive oil, salt, dried rosemary and pepper and bake for thirty minutes until soft.

Next, cook the quinoa. This should take about twenty minutes – to flavour it add the juice of one lime or a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and a sprinkling of salt as it starts to cook.

Once this is cooking place the raisins into a bowl of warm water and allow them to soak for as long as the quinoa cooks – this makes them much juicier and so much more delicious.

Next, cook the lentils. For this dish the lentils should stay a little hard, instead of becoming mushy – to get this perfect texture they should be boiled for about ten minutes, until they have softened perfectly but are not squishy. Then peel and grate the carrots using the fattest holes of a cheese grater.

 Finally, make the dressing simply by mixing the almond butter, olive oil, lime juice & water in a blender or processor until smooth. Place all of the ingredients into a large salad bowl, pour on the dressing and stir well. Enjoy!

I’m not sure about you guys but I thought finding delicious, healthy bread alternatives was one of the hardest parts of going gluten free. After a lot of searching I’ve now found some fantastic bread brands but I’ve never found any good wraps, which is such a shame as they make for such an awesomely easy lunch or snack. So I’ve been playing with different recipes for a while trying to find a homemade alternative and I think these spinach and quinoa wraps are the answer! The recipe seriously could not be easier, it literally takes ten minutes and the wraps last about a week in an air tight container, which is awesome too. Like normal wraps they don’t have an overpowering flavour, just a subtly savoury essence that complements whatever you add to them, and you really can’t taste the spinach at all – it’s just there for extra colourful goodness. That’s one of the other incredible things about these, not only are they unbelievably simple, inexpensive and totally delicious, they’re also much really good for you – much better than the vast majority of ready-made gluten free products which are filled with the most bizarre chemicals and additives! These wraps are made simply from  quinoa, brown rice, spinach, water and a little olive oil – you can’t get more natural and health-giving than that – tons of fibre, protein, minerals & vitamins!

I love mine piled high with mashed avocado, chopped jalapeño and red pepper, cherry tomatoes, sweetcorn, lime and a little pink himalayan salt. It’s just divine! Although, I have to admit that they also taste amazing with almond butter and sliced banana – seriously worth a try! Either way there is just so much goodness and so much flavour that you can’t help but love these!

Makes three wraps:

- 1 cup of spinach

- 3/4 of a cup of quinoa flour

- 1/4 of a cup of buckwheat or brown rice flour

- 3/4 of a cup of water

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil

- 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

- 1 teaspoon of dried herbs (I used rosemary, but oregano/basil/herbs de provence etc are all great)

- salt

For the toppings (serves 1)

- 1 mashed ripe avocado

- 1/2 a red pepper finely chopped

- cherry tomatoes cut into quarters

- 1/2 of a cup of sweetcorn

- sprinkling of coriander/cilantro

- 1 juiced lime

- salt

Start by mixing the quinoa & buckwheat flours together in a bowl with the herbs and salt, then add the apple cider vinegar, olive oil & water and mix.

Place the spinach into a food processor and blend for a minute until it breaks down, then add the rest of the mixture to the processor and blend for another minute or two until a totally smooth, green mix forms. Scrape all the batter out of the processor back into a mixing bowl, as this will make scooping the batter into the frying pan much easier!

Next, coat the bottom of a frying pan in olive oil and begin to heat. Once the pan is hot, which should take about two minutes, add a third of the batter to it. Use a spoon to mould the mix into a thin circular shape – the thinner the better. After about a minute the bottom will be solid, at which point flip the wrap over and allow the other side to cook for between 30 seconds to a minute, depending on the thickness. Remove the wrap and place on a plate, add a little more olive oil to the pan – make sure you swirl the pan around so that all the base is covered. Then go again with the next one!

Pile your wrap high with all kind of yumminess and enjoy!

Anytime I go to a raw or vegan restaurant I head straight for the raw lasagne. I just love it! As a child lasagne was my favourite food, I asked for it all the time and whilst this this is not the same, there’s no bolognese or buttery cheese sauce, it still embodies the most awesome thing about lasagne – the many layers of awesomely contrasting textures and flavours. This version is made up of layers of thinly sliced zucchini, rosemary infused brazil nut cheese, plum tomatoes and avocado basil pesto. All so healthy and so outrageously delicious. The pesto is my favourite part though. It’s so incredibly creamy thanks to the avocado with sweet overtones of basil, subtle tangy essences from the lemon and a savoury nuttiness from the pine nuts. It’s awesome and literally just melts-in-your-mouth, bringing all of the other layers together in sweet bites of food heaven! There’s also a secret stash of spinach in there too, just for extra green goodness – but you can’t taste it underneath all the other flavours. If you ever want to impress people with super healthy raw vegan food this is your dish, everyone loves it and it doesn’t taste healthy at all despite being packed with all kind of vitamins and minerals in their most life-giving raw forms. It’s super simple too. I was a bit nervous to make it the first time, assuming it would be really complicated and difficult to get right but in fact its one of the easiest dishes I’ve ever made and there’s almost no washing up, which is always fun too! It’s light yet satisfying and thanks to the nuts it will keep you bursting with energy all day! You will love this. My taste-testing flatmate claimed earlier it was the best thing I’ve ever made!

Serves 2

- 2 zucchini (courgettes)

- 6 plum tomatoes

For the avocado basil pesto:

- 1 ripe avocado

- 2 cups of fresh basil

- 1/3 of a cup of pine nuts

- 1 lemon

- salt

- water as needed

For the brazil nut cheese:

- 1/2 a cup of brazil nuts (about 40 nuts)

- 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast

- 1 tablespoon of olive oil

- 1 stick of fresh rosemary

- 1 lemon

- salt

- water as needed

Start by making the brazil nut cheese. Place the brazil nuts and the lemon juice in a food processor and blend, once the nuts are crushed add the remaining ingredients. Slowly add a little water to help the blending – you want to keep it thick though. Once this is done remove it from the blender and keep to one side.

Then make the pesto by simply adding all the needed ingredients (juiced lemon not whole and of course remove the avocado from its skin too) into the processor and blending with a little water until smooth and creamy. Place to one side.

After this use a sharp knife to slice the zucchini first in half and then cut very thin slices from the two halves. Next, cut the tomatoes into thin slices.

Once everything is ready assemble the lasagnes – place a layer of zucchini noodles on the bottom, then add a layer of cheese followed by tomato slices and then pesto. Then repeat each layer one more time, sprinkling a few pine nuts on the top for decoration. Enjoy!

I’ve had a few emails recently asking about the basics of healthy eating, how to start, what to eat etc so I thought I’d dedicate a blog post to it to help anyone who’s just getting started! For me there are two fundamental philosophies for healthy eating – firstly, this is absolutely not a diet and you really shouldn’t think of it as one, it’s never about deprivation or starvation but instead it’s about creating a new mindset and a new way of life. It’s about embracing all the delicious foods that you should eat and all the amazing things that you can do with them – I never count calories, you simply don’t need to if you eat this way. My other guideline is to always eat pure, clean, unprocessed, unrefined and plant-based foods. This is really important as this is what enables you to live by my first philosophy – if you only eat food that your body needs and loves then your digestive system works a million times faster and more efficiently, allowing you to easily process and breakdown everything that you put into your body. This is what gives you so much energy as there’s nothing in your body to clog it up and slow it down.

So what do you cut out? This may seem like a long list but trust me the list of all the awesome things that you’re adding in is even longer! To really thrive you should say goodbye to anything refined – white rice, white flour etc, anything with chemicals, additives and ‘flavourings’ – lots of supposedly ‘healthy’ items are full of these, any refined sugars, all meat, dairy, gluten, candy and fizzy drinks. All these things are very acidic to the body, which works best when it’s alkaline, they’re also really hard to digest which means they suck your energy and slow down your digestion.

So what should you eat? All of mother nature’s goodness! Embrace all fruits and veggies; whole grains – quinoa, brown/wild rice; all beans and legumes – chickpeas, lentils; potatoes – sweet and regular; all nuts and seeds; superfoods like cacao, goji berries, hemp, flax & chia; dried fruits etc. Almond milk makes the best dairy alternative, and actually contains more calcium, while quinoa, almond and brown rice flours make the best baking materials. Honey, dates, pure maple syrup, ripe bananas and raw agave syrup make the best replacement for sugar, and are really just as sweet and cacao makes the best chocolate recipes ever while loading you up on superfood nutrition. Dried fruits dipped in nut butter make the best candy replacements and frozen blended bananas make the perfect ice-cream substitute. There are ways of making all your favourite foods healthy, you just have to learn how. But remember with everything I’ve mentioned here that if anything contains weird additives then it’s not going to have the same awesome effect on you and non-dairy milks are a great example of this, they all contain the most bizarre ingredients. So make your own it’s the easiest thing in the world, tastes delicious and gives you more goodness than you can imagine!

Where to start? Start with smoothies, try having a smoothie for breakfast everyday for a week and see how you feel – I can guarantee you’ll feel so awesome! It’s amazing to make such a positively healthy decision first thing in the morning, it energises you and sets you up for a great day. Smoothies are also so unbelievably delicious and the quickest thing to make, they’re also one of the best ways to get lots of nutrition into your diet really quickly. My advice would be to use a ripe banana as the base, then add any fruits you want – strawberries, mango, blueberries, pineapple, pear, apple, raspberries etc, avocado also tastes amazing as it gives such a creamy texture, plus a cup of spinach or kale for green goodness. If I want to sweeten it then add a couple of medjool dates, maybe some almond butter and then a mix of gluten free oats, ground flaxseed, chia seeds and hemp protein, blended with either some water or homemade almond milk – water is much healthier than most store brought non-dairy milks. I sometimes even add things like broccoli florets to my smoothies but I think it takes time to build up to that! It’s really filling and you’ll feel amazing!

Also quinoa – learn to love quinoa! It’s the best base for any meal, so delicious and so healthy. To make it you literally just put a third of a cup of quinoa with about two thirds of a cup of boiling water into a pan to heat for 15-20 minutes with lime/lemon juice and salt, cooking it until it enlarges, softens and begins to taste great! It’s awesome as you don’t have to do anything to it while it cooks, except once or twice check it has enough water – it’s a million times easier than cooking rice. I then keep this in an air tight container in my fridge and use it as the base for meals, adding avocado, tomatoes, roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, homemade pesto etc. Sweet potatoes are an amazing thing to keep in your fridge as they’re so insanely delicious, very filling and super healthy,  I often roast a few at a time so that I always have some. To make them you simply cut them into chunks, cover with olive oil, salt and cinnamon and roast at 180C until they’re soft and tender, which depending on their size will take between 30mins and an hour, but again you don’t really have to do anything to them except stir them once or twice. They make a delicious addition to any meal.

Always cook everything with coconut oil, olive oil, rapeseed oil and use things like hemp oil and flaxseed oil for cold dressings – never use things like vegetable oil, vegan butters and sunflower oil – these are nasty and processed and don’t contain any of the good fats!

And learn to snack, I normally eat five times a day – my favourite snacks are gluten free toast with almond butter and sliced banana; dried fruits – apricots, figs & dates with nut butter; avocado mashed with 1 large tomato/a handful of cherry tomatoes, 1/2 a red pepper, 1 lime and salt; and frozen fruit – for some reason fruit tastes best frozen! All of these are so easy and so delicious – you’ll never miss processed food with things like this! This is my favourite healthy bread brand - http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/script/search.html?query=biona+bread&snar=

Oh and always start your morning with hot water and lemon, as this kickstarts your digestion, alkalinises your body and boosts your immune system!

So embrace all of mother nature’s goodness, throw away anything with additives, learn to love food, love snacking and love your body and I can guarantee it will love you back! You won’t believe how fast your body will metabolise foods when you do this and how much energy you’ll have. Just remember that just because something is marketed as healthy or sold in a health food store, doesn’t mean that it’s actually healthy!

If you want daily inspiration of all the awesome things you can eat then come follow me on instagram – my name is Deliciouslyella !

This might be the simplest, quickest recipe ever – it literally requires no thought or skill, but it tastes so awesomely incredible. It’s so good that I’ve been making it almost every day for the last two weeks, and each time I end up eating at least half of it straight out the blender with a spoon! The mix of avocado with red pepper, lime and tomatoes is just so wonderfully sweet, creamy and tangy – there is spinach thrown in there too, but as with many of my recipes it’s just there for extra green goodness, you can’t taste it. The whole thing is actually just so outrageously creamy that it really feels like it’s full of cream, the same kind of texture as a sour cream or mayonnaise, but a million times richer in flavour! It goes so well with absolutely everything too, I love it with carrot, pepper and zucchini crudités; spread over raw crackers or gluten free buckwheat toast; mixed into zucchini noodles with a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds and used as a pesto for veggie quinoa bowls. It’s the easiest way to add an incredible flavour to anything! Honestly if you need a three minute lunch or snack make this, you’ll fall so in love with it so quickly – it’ll energise you, satisfy all your hunger and cravings and fill you with so much goodness.

The combination of ingredients will also do wonders for you, especially the spinach which is literally the world’s healthiest food, it’s packed with vitamins and minerals with one cup giving you more than ten times your recommended daily amount of vitamin K and more than three times your need of vitamin A. This is awesome as Vitamin K is especially important for maintaining bone health and enabling healthy blood sugar regulation, while vitamin A is essential for strengthening your body’s immunity against infection, as well as helping it to build and maintain clean, healthy skin. It also contains a whole host of other key nutrients – manganese, magnesium, iron, vitamin C & E, calcium, potassium, B vitamins, fibre, protein and antioxidants to name just a few! All of which help to build a strong, healthy, disease free body. The avocado enhances all this goodness as it helps you absorb nutrients, while also strengthening the antioxidant and anti-inflammtaroy properties along with the tomatoes and red pepper. So you have so many reasons to eat as much of this as you like!

Makes 1 bowl

- 1 ripe avocado

- 1 red pepper

- 1 cup of spinach

- 6 cherry tomatoes

- 2 limes

- salt

Squeeze the limes, remove the seeds from the inside of the pepper, peel and pit the avocado and then simply place these with the rest of the ingredients into your food processor and blend for about two minute until a creamy dip forms. Then scoop it into a bowl and enjoy!

This recipe for cashew and almond yoghurt might be my best I’ve made in a while – it is just so awesome. So good that my boyfriend actually said that I shouldn’t share the recipe but bottle it and sell it, and he doesn’t even like yoghurt normally! It’s just so beautifully sweet and creamy, yet wonderfully light and simple. I’ve been loving it so much for breakfast, mixing a few spoonfuls of it with banana slices, frozen raspberries, raw cacao nibs and dried figs; seriously the best breakfast ever! It tastes so good mixed into smoothies too, making them extra creamy. I think you’re all going to fall so in love with this recipe! I know I for one have really missed yoghurt since giving up dairy and I really don’t like the non-dairy alternatives as they’re filled with weird sweeteners, additives and chemicals which I don’t want to put into my body – so this is so perfect for all of us! It’s so easy to make too, you really don’t have to do anything to it other than pit a few dates and put everything into a blender. I really can’t wait to hear what you guys think of this – I’ve been so excited to share it with you!

I know some people might be reading the title of this and thinking ahh there must be so many calories in that! As much as I don’t believe in calories I know some people do think about them, but you really don’t need to worry about it here as there is one cup of nuts per 3 cups of water so there’s nothing crazy going on – it’s really no different to having a spoonful of nut butter! Studies also show that eating nuts actually lowers the risk of weight gain! This is partly because they’re such a filling source of protein so they sate your hunger and therefore stop snacking, as well as filling you with energy. The protein content of almonds is particularly awesome, did you know that just a quarter of a cup gives you a whole 8 grams of protein – that’s 2 grams more than an egg! Both the almonds and cashews are also filled with the same awesome heart-healthy fats found in olive oil, which lower your cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease, as well as filling you with antioxidants and a whole array of important vitamins and minerals! So don’t be scared of nuts, they’re amazing!

Makes one jug – about six servings

- 1/2 a cup of almonds

- 1/2 a cup of cashews

- 2-3 cups of water

- 1 cup of medjool dates

- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

Place the nuts into a bowl and cover them with water. Then leave them to soak for about four hours, at which point drain the water and place them into a food processor.

Blend the drained nuts with the dates, cinnamon and 2 cups of fresh water for about 10-15 minutes, this will depend on the strength of your processor but you need to blend until a totally smooth, slightly runny yoghurt forms. If for some reason it’s not turning totally smooth then try putting the whole thing into a smoothie blender and blending it with a little extra water.

Once it’s ready pour it into your bowl, top it with deliciousness and enjoy! Then put the rest of the yoghurt into an airtight container and store it in the fridge.

This might be the lightest, fluffiest, most incredibly moist cake ever. Seriously it’s amazing. You could eat at least half the cake before you started to feel that nasty nauseous, lethargic feeling that a slice of normal cake often gives you! Yet it is still so awesomely decadent with its three layers of perfect chocolate sponge sandwiched between lashings of thick, creamy chocolate frosting, rows of sweet fresh raspberries and a sprinkling of crunchy almond flakes to finish. You’ll really impress everyone with this – they’ll never believe that it could possibly be so guilt-free when it looks and tastes this good! For me the best thing about it though is the sweet, but slightly sharp tart contrast between the berries and the chocolate – it’s so perfect! Not only does the cake taste fantastic, but it’s actually really good for you as it only contains the best, most natural ingredients so each bite is packed with the nutrition and love that your body needs. The sponge is made primarily of sweet potatoes, ground almonds, dates and water, while the main ingredient in the icing is avocado! Of course everything also uses raw cacao powder to get that wonderfully rich chocolate flavour that we all love, which is awesome as cacao tastes much better and more authentic than cocoa, while also doing wonders for your body. Unlike cocoa powder, the superfood cacao isn’t refined so it still contains all the original vitamins and minerals – it’s even packed with more antioxidants than almost any other food on the planet, while also containing lots of serotonin, which acts as a mood-booster and a natural anti-depressant! So eating chocolate cake really does make you happy!

Serves 12

For the cake

- 5 small sweet potatoes

- 2 cups of ground almonds

- 1 cup of buckwheat flour

- 1 cup of dates (preferably medjool)

- 3/4 of a cup of water

- 1/4 of a cup of raw agave syrup or pure maple syrup (add more if you like it sweeter)

- 3-4 tablespoons of raw cacao powder

- 1 tablespoon of cinnamon

- 2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste

- a pinch of salt

For the icing

- 5 avocados

- 1 really ripe banana

- 1 cup of dates  (preferably medjool)

- 3 tablespoons of raw cacao

- 3 tablespoons of raw agave syrup or pure maple syrup

For the toppings:

- 1 cup of raspberries

- a handful of almond flakes

Start by pre-heating th eoven to 180C. Then peel the sweet potatoes, before slicing them into chunks and steaming for about twenty minutes – until they’re really soft and almost close to disintegrating.

While the sweet potatoes cook place all the dry ingredients – ground almonds, buckwheat, cinnamon, cacao and salt into a large bowl and mix well. Keep this to one side.

Then make the icing – simple place all the ingrdients into a food processor (peel the avocado & banana first of course and remove the avocado and date stones). Blend for a few minutes until a smooth, thick, creamy mix forms. Place this into a new bowl and store in the fridge.

By this time the sweet potatoes should be ready. Transfer them into the (empty) food processor with the pitted dates, vanilla bean paste, water and raw agave and blend until smooth. Then mix this into the bowl of dry ingredients until a delicious cake mix appears.

Pour this into three separate cake tins and bake for about twenty minutes – until you can put a fork in and pull it out clean. Once the cake tins have cooled down, turn them upside down onto a plate or cooling rack for at least five minutes until they’re no longer hot at all.

Once cool, assemble the cake. Put the thickest cake on the bottom and spread a layer of icing over it before placing a circle of raspberries around the edge and a few in the centre for balance. Then place the second layer on top do exactly the same thing. For the final layer I sprinkled almond flakes on a layer of icing as I love the colour contrasts, but you can add more raspberries if you prefer. Then slice and enjoy!

Asparagus is back in season in England, which is the best news as I love asparagus. It’s one of my all time favourite vegetables. It just has such an incredible flavour that needs very little done to it as it’ so naturally awesome. As a result I think it tastes best in very simple meals, like this delicious salad. The aim of this salad is to let every delicious ingredient speak for itself, no one flavour dominates but instead each mouthful is about subtlety! The new potatoes are cooked so that they are so wonderfully soft and just melt-in-your-mouth, absorbing the beautiful essences of the olive oil, apple cider vinegar and lime juice. The avocado then adds the perfect creamy touch, bringing everything together, while the tomatoes add an awesomely sweet, juicy element and the pumpkin seeds add the all-important crunch! They all taste perfect tossed together with wild rocket leaves and served with a side of my favourite borough market hummus – healthy eating at its best! I’ve been eating this a lot over the past few weeks – it’s just so easy and everyone seems to love it.

Potatoes often get a bad reputation, I find that people are weirdly scared of them, seeing them as some form of evil fattening ingredients – which, let me tell you, is kind of ridiculous as they’re really not calorific at all! One cup of potatoes contains just 150 calories, so really there’s nothing to panic about here – besides they’re a slow releasing carbohydrate so will keep you full and bursting with energy for hours. Even better, they also contain a whole host of really important vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C, B vitamins, potassium, copper, manganese and fibre – all of which allow your body to function properly; while also being packed with a wide variety of antioxidants, which protect your body from the damage that leads to chronic diseases. So maybe it’s time to re-examine your potato relationships, they’re really very delicious and wonderfully healthy!

Serves 2

- about 12-15 stalks of asparagus

- 8 large new potatoes

- 3 large handfuls of rocket/arugula

- a dozen cherry tomatoes

- 2 ripe avocados

- a handful of pumpkin seeds

- 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

- 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

- 1 squeezed lime

- salt

Optional: one pot of hummus

Start by boiling the potatoes for 15-20 minutes until they’re perfectly soft but not disintegrating. While these cook steam the asparagus for 5-10 minutes, until they’re perfectly cooked but also not too soft.

Then slice your cherry tomatoes into quarters and your avocados into bite sized squares, placing them when ready into a big salad bowl with the rocket and pumpkin seeds. Once the asparagus is cooked add this into the bowl too.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain them, then slice them in half length-ways before slicing them again into half moons. Then add these to the bowl too.

Drizzle the olive oil, apple cider and lime across the salad with a sprinkling of salt. Stir well then serve and enjoy!

I have to admit that Nutella used to be my favourite food. I could sit and eat an entire jar with a spoon no problem. My love of this chocolatey, hazelnutty blend of awesomeness meant I had to explore a new health giving version, which I’ve been doing over the past few months. Some of you may have seen another recipe for this on my blog a while back, but that one wasn’t quite right so it’s been tweaked and revamped to make this one, which to be honest is unbelievable. Just so perfectly thick, smooth, sweet and creamy. It melts perfectly on hot toast over a layer of crunchy almond butter, tastes delicious drizzled across a bowl of sliced banana & juicy berries and works a treat eaten straight out of the jar with a spoon!

I never realised it could be so easy to turn this classic spread into something so healthy. I really think you’ll be so surprised about just how similar it tastes to the real thing but how much better it makes you feel. It’s so awesome as each bite really is packed full of delicious health-giving goodness. All of its ingredients have their own amazing properties. Hazelnuts, which are the main ingredient, are filled with numerous vitamins, minerals, protein, fibre and heart-healthy fats, all of which are vital for supporting your body and digestion. Even better, they’re particularly rich in vitamin E which is the most important vitamin for maintaining beautifully clean and shiny skin, hair and nails. Cacao, the bean which all chocolate is made from, also has numerous beneficial nutrients in this raw, unprocessed state as it is packed with iron, fibre, calcium, zinc, potassium and antioxidants, unfortunately these benefits disappear when it is processed and refined to make conventional chocolate though, which is why this Nutella trumps the supermarket version any day.

Makes 1 jar

- 1 cup of hazelnuts

- 1 cup of medjool dates

- 1/2 a cup of water

- 2 tablespoons of pure organic maple syrup (please don’t use one with nasty additives)

- 1-2 heaped tablespoons of raw cacao powder (depending on how rich you like it)

Optional: 1/2 a ripe banana – gives a very subtle, but very delicious flavour!

Start by soaking the hazelnuts in water overnight, or for at least six hours – this is so important and the recipe just won’t work if you don’t do this! To soak simply place the nuts in a bowl and cover them with filtered water, then leave to one side. Once you are ready to make the Nutella drain the water from the bowl and discard it. Then place the nuts in a food processor with the pitted dates, fresh water, maple syrup and raw cacao (if you want the banana touch then add the banana at this point too) and blend for about 5-10 minutes, until a very smooth paste forms. Then store it in an airtight jam jar in the fridge. Enjoy!