Happy Easter everyone! Today, I’m excited to be sharing with you the recipe for Pret’s world famous Dark Chocolate and Almond Butter Cookie! 🍪 This has to be one of the best cafe cookies available, and one of my personal favourites! Fresh from the oven, this decadent chocolate cookie is crunchy on the outer edge, gooey in the middle with melting chunks of dark chocolate and crunchy almond pieces throughout. It’s so good!
* This recipe was originally posted in March 2014. The page was updated in February 2020.
It’s Shrove Tuesday tomorrow and I am really looking forward to making a big pile of my family’s favourite vegan crepes. They are so easy to make and use basic pantry ingredients. We don’t even use an egg replacer! I’ve always loved French-style crepes but I love this vegan version even more. They taste amazing and they’re cruelty-free too ❤️
If you’re looking for a special occasion dessert that is super easy to make but has the ‘wow’ factor, then today’s recipe is for you! It’s a rich chocolate torte, consisting of a silky smooth ganache set on top of a biscuit base. There is no baking involved and it only takes around 20 minutes to prepare. The hardest part is waiting for it to set before you can dive in!
The inspiration for today’s recipe was a Dark Chocolate & Coconut Tart that I spotted in this month’s Vegan Life magazine. It looked so decadent and inviting! As I love playing around with recipes and creating my own take on them, I decided to switch the pastry for a biscuit base (to make it a ‘no bake’ recipe) and I experimented with different ingredients for the chocolate filling. I’m not personally a big fan of the chocolate coconut flavour, so I opted to use soya cream instead of coconut milk, and it worked really well!
For the biscuit base (aka cookies for our overseas friends!) I chose to use Lotus Biscoff biscuits. The sweet caramel flavour of these biscuits worked beautifully with the rich dark chocolate ganache. I added a little sprinkle of Biscoff crumbs on top to finish off the torte and it looked so pretty… like little flecks of gold!
If you’re gluten-free, you can easily switch the Lotus biscuits for a gluten-free biscuit/cookie instead. One of my favourites are the Nairn’s Gluten Free Biscuit Breaks and I think their Stem Ginger Biscuit could work well in this recipe. I’ll definitely have to give it a try.
I made this torte to share with friends and family over the festive holidays and so far, it’s going down a treat. Everyone that’s tried it has given it a big thumbs up!
It is pretty rich and filling, so be sure to slice modestly. (The recipe below will easily serve twelve). I love to serve the torte with some fruit compote on the side. The fruit helps to cut through the richness of the chocolate. Cherry or raspberry compote are my favourites as I find their flavours pair really well with chocolate. Adding the compote also helps to ‘dress’ the serving plate (though I really need to work on my plating skills! 😂)
If you make this Easy Vegan Chocolate Torte, I’d love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for adaptations! Tag your photos with #bitofthegoodstuff on social media – I always love to see your creations! You can also connect with me on my social media channels here: Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest.
With love,
Sharon xx
P.S. A huge thank you to everyone who has left a comment or review on this recipe! Your feedback honestly means the world to me, and I love hearing about the creative twists and adaptations you’ve tried. It’s also so helpful for others in the community who come to make this torte, so please do keep sharing your experiences — I truly appreciate it! ❤️
* This recipe was first published in December 2017. The page was updated in December 2019
Hello everyone! I hope your preparations for the festive holiday are going well. Hopefully you’ve been a bit more organised than me. As usual, I’ve left a lot of shopping and food preparation to the last minute, so today – Christmas Eve – is going to be one very busy day for me! However, before I crack on with the preparations, I thought I would share one last recipe on the blog before 2017 comes to a close. The recipe is for a giant-sized mince pie, which is just perfect for sharing with friends and family this season. I’ve already made three of these pies in the past week, and no doubt I will making more in the lead up to the New Year.
During the festive season, my family loves to have home-made mince pies for dessert, drizzled in custard or cream. However, while they taste delicious, individual mince pies do tend to look a bit lost on dessert plates and aren’t what I would consider ‘special enough’ to serve to dinner guests. To resolve this, I’ve played around with my favourite mince pie recipe and created a family-sized pie instead, which can be sliced and served on a plate with a more appealing presentation.
It took a couple of attempts with different pastry quantities and baking methods, but I’m really pleased with how it finally turned out. The pastry is lovely and crisp; it’s robust enough to slice without crumbling and, most importantly, it has been given the thumbs up from the recipe testers in my house.
I used my favourite organic mincemeat for this pie, which is made by Meridian. For the flour, I used Doves Organic White Spelt flour. For a while now, spelt has been my flour of choice for pastry-making. Personally, I find it gives pastry a nicer taste and texture compared to plain (all purpose) flour. As an added bonus, I find that some of my friends that generally avoid gluten/wheat, can tolerate spelt. It does make me wonder whether it’s specifically modern wheat that’s causing tummy issues for a lot of people.
If you make this Vegan Festive Mince Pie, I’d love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for adaptations! Tag your photos with #bitofthegoodstuff on social media – I always love to see your creations! You can also connect with me on my social media channels here: Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest.
Happy holidays everyone! ❤️
With love,
Sharon xx
* This recipe was originally posted in March 2015. The page was updated in October 2019.
Have you ever tried making your own energy balls? It’s so easy! You simply throw all the ingredients in a food processor, whizz for a few seconds then shape the mixture into balls. It couldn’t easier!
What I especially love about these balls is that they taste decadent, yet they’re packed full of nutrient-rich ingredients that are not only going to increase our energy levels, but also boost our health in general. Each ball is filled with protein, heart-healthy fats, complex carbs, fibre, plus a whole host of minerals and antioxidant compounds. It’s amazing just how much goodness you can fit into one little ball!
And not only does it work out much cheaper to make your own rather than buying the branded versions, but it also means that you get to flavour them however you wish! In today’s recipe, I’m using one of my favourite flavour combinations – cocoa and lime. I love anything chocolatey, but especially when it’s combined with a citrus flavour like lime. It help cuts through the richness of the chocolate, and adds a delicious fresh, zesty taste to every bite.
Since I originally posted this recipe back in 2015, I’ve made literally hundreds of these balls to share with friends, family and vegan festival goers, and they’ve proven to be a big hit with everyone that’s tried them. Even little kids have given them a thumbs up, which has made me super happy! These balls make a great after-school snack and (provided you carefully supervise the food processor part) children could easily help you make them. They could even experiment with their own flavour combinations!
N.B. The above values are estimates. The actual nutritional values will vary depending on the brands and ingredients used.
If you make these Cocoa Lime Energy Balls, I’d love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for adaptations! Tag your photos with #bitofthegoodstuff on social media – I always love to see your creations! You can also connect with me on my social media channels here: Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest.
With love,
Sharon xx
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Each year, for my mum’s birthday in May, I love to challenge myself to create a new vegan cake for her. This tradition started back in 2013, when I made my first ever vegan Lemon Drizzle Cake (and, to this day, that cake remains one of the most popular recipes on my blog!!) For this year’s birthday, I decided to attempt a Coffee and Walnut Cake. It’s an oldie but a goodie (and one of my personal favourites!)
And my mum’s verdict?
She messaged me when I got home to say that this might be my best cake ever! 🤭
And coming from my mum, that is some accolade!!
My birthday was a couple of weeks after my mum’s, so I decided to remake the cake and check the recipe notes that I’d quickly scribbled on a piece of paper. Rather than starting the recipe from scratch, I’d used my trusty Chocolate Celebration Cake as a starting point, then tweaked the ingredient ratios to compensate for the coffee. It worked a charm!
Since then, I’ve made the cake three more times for friend and family celebrations (checking the recipe each time!) It’s received lots of positive feedback so I’m finally confident enough to share it on the blog.
I’m not normally a fan of cake frosting, but the coffee frosting on this cake, I love! You can use any kind of instant coffee in the frosting. In the first five cakes I made, I used Beanies flavoured coffees which came in one of my The Vegan Kind Lifestyle Subscription Boxes. The Irish Cream, Creamy Caramel and Cookie Dough flavours were especially good, and made the frosting taste even more delicious!
More recently, I’ve been using Nescafe Gold Espresso, bought from Sainsbury’s.
As a twist on traditional coffee and walnut cake, I decided to decorate mine with roasted pistachios and rose petals. The green and pink colours looked so pretty set against the backdrop of the coffee frosting.
If you do have roses in your garden, it’s a lovely touch to use them as decoration on your bakes. The petals you see in the photos in this post came from my friend’s garden, so every time I see them it reminds me of her (which makes me smile a lot!)
It’s really easy to dry petals for cake decoration. I’ll pop the instructions in another blog post in case you’d like to give it a try yourself.
I’m really looking forward to seeing your remakes of this cake and how you choose to decorate it! 💜 Tag your photos with #bitofthegoodstuff on social media – I always love to see your creations! You can also connect with me on my social media channels here: Instagram , Facebook, Pinterest.
With love,
Sharon xx
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