Chocolate avocado cookies

I could make you guess the secret ingredient... but I already wrote it in the title.

After a short absence (mainly due to me being busy/lazy in the evenings and weekends after writing all day, every day at work), I am back with another of my "pretend they're healthy because they have 1 healthy ingredient and that obviously cancels out all the unhealthy stuff" recipes.

Despite the sugar and chocolate in these, I guess they could be classed as relatively healthy as they contain an actual fruit(?) and no butter! As with many other bakes which involve a fruit or vegetable in an attempt to add some extra vitamins, this actually has the added benefit of making them super moist and soft.

The search for the best ever brownies - do they exist? Can we bake them? Part 1

I'm entitling this post 'Part 1' because I am 99% sure that Bella and I will return to brownies at some point on this blog. They are a food close to our hearts. I've made a lot of brownies in my time, while I was at uni I had a habit of vastly under cooking them so they tasted slightly eggy and frightened my housemate, but now I'm trying to be a more mature baker.

This is a foolproof recipe from our good friends at the BBC.

This was taken at work, nice change of scene for you.

Coffee and walnut cake

With the days feeling blissfully longer, I suddenly felt like I needed a hit of coffee and sugar so I baked this cake one evening after work. I apologise in advance for the poor selection of pictures, this was a quick bake, but I trust your baking prowess now. Once again, it's super easy and produces great results, hats off to the BBC.

Potentially not its best angle.

Quinoa pesto salad

Continuing with this weeks salad theme, here is my go-to packed lunch salad. This is really customisable with whatever veggies or ingredients you have in the fridge. If I have feta, olives, sun dried tomatoes or artichokes, they take it to the next level. Peppers and courgettes are the vegetables I usually use, as they're what we usually have. Spinach works particularly well also, and you can make other additions after its cooked such as tomatoes, avocado or sweetcorn. Basically, just chuck in whatever you have.

I was making this at around 9pm on a Sunday night, so please excuse the awful photographs. It tastes way nicer than my photos would lead you to believe.

It looks much better in real life, I swear!

Farro, kale and goats' cheese salad

This was a bit of a leap of faith for me, recipe-wise. My parents have a Waitrose calendar hanging in their bedroom and the photograph for April was of this salad. None of us knew what farro dicocco was (it turns out to be an Italian spelt readily available in Waitrose and I presume most supermarkets), but this was such a success! It was really delicious and there's even enough left over for my lunch tomorrow.