Keep your picnic tidy with cutlery wraps

The sun is shining, the grass is green and jackets are stowed securely back in our wardrobes. That’s right, picnic season is upon us.

To make al fresco eating much more practical, Etsy seller NStar Studios has come up with these genius picnic cutlery wraps. Roll it up and tie it in a bow to keep your cutlery neatly together rather than clattering around the bottom of your hamper and poking holes in your food bags.

Designer Nicky Ross gets extra points for using bamboo cutlery (reusable, and much more eco-friendly than plastic) and designing a pouch that can be put in the washing machine, ready for the inevitable (or is that just us?) lemonade / yoghurt / juice explosion.

Bake a chocolate beetroot cake

How pretty is this cake?

Blogger Joy the Baker has sidestepped unnatural dyes and the like and still managed to bring us a confection the colour of which is rarely seen outside of a sweet shop. Her secret? Beetroot.

Joy’s recipe for chocolate beetroot cake with cream cheese icing includes grated beetroot to keep the texture moist and the colour bright. The taste, Joy assures us, is sweet-but-not-too-sweet and absolutely, definitely, not like a salad!

It is worth bearing in mind that beetroot is messy though, so don some rubber gloves if you don’t want your hands to look like Miss Piggy for days afterwards.

Of course, you can leave the beetroot out of the icing if you want to keep it classy and cream-coloured, but we think that there’s nothing wrong with the occasional touch of kitsch, especially when it comes to cake!

Indulge in some brioche French toast

The blogosphere is jam-packed full of healthy, delicious, nutrient-filled breakfast ideas. So why can’t we get Sunday Suppers’ ridiculously indulgent recipe for brioche French toast out of our minds?

The ingredients list includes (deep breath) crème fraiche, mascarpone, marmalade, and six whole eggs. Enough to send anyone into an immediate food coma, which isn’t ideal if the clock has yet to even strike noon.

We’re saving this recipe up for a special occasion, or a lazy Sunday (whichever comes first), and planning a light lunch that day!

Vegetable of the month... rhubarb

Vegetable of the month? Rhubarb? Yep. We haven’t cheated, rhubarb is technically a vegetable.

We were going to blog about asparagus (also in season, also fabulous), but for some reason we kept finding ourselves swayed back towards those bright pink rhubarb stems.

There are plenty of options for this lovely veggie other than rhubarb and strawberry crumble (although that is a classic for a reason – that’s our favourite recipe we’ve linked up). To prove it we’ve lined up a whole day’s worth of rhubarb recipes.

Kicking off bright and early in the morning, we want toast but oh, we’re bored of marmite or marmalade. Fear not, the aptly named Lovely Morning has come to the rescue with her rhubarb jam recipe. Munch it on toast, pop it on some natural yoghurt or wrap a jar up as a gift for a friend, its as versatile as you like.

Next we have a casual garden lunch with friends, which we’ll conclude with a cheeky rhubarb crumb bar from White on Rice Couple. Stomachs were rumbling all round when this recipe popped up on our screens, is it having the same effect on you?

Finally, to round off our tiring rhubarb-filled day, we’ll be knocking up an ice-cold fresh rhubarb cocktail courtesy of Sugarlaws. Phew, we told you we could do it. And not a crumble in sight!

Kick off your day with fruity granola

We’re struggling a little to know what to eat for breakfast at the moment. Our diaries say May, the never ending drizzle outside disagrees. Surely it’s too late in the year for porridge?

Green Kitchen Stories has come up with the answer in this  fruity yoghurt granola recipe in their guest post over at My New Roots . A bit fruity, a bit creamy, and oaty enough to prepare us for the drizzle outside.

Don’t be dismayed by the somewhat extensive recipe on the blog – with the best will in the world, no-one has the energy for that much measuring in one morning! We’ll be swapping in whatever fruit’s in season and raiding the corners of our store cupboards for nuts and seeds for the granola. Yum.

Join the bread revolution

Is there anything better than freshly-baked homemade bread? Bakery owners Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan think not.

Champions of all things local, seasonal and foraged, boys behind The Thoughtful Bread Company have written their first book. Bread Revolution is packed with recipes for us to try at home. We dropped into the launch party to sample the recipes and can confirm that these bakers have some serious skills.

In particular, we couldn’t stop nibbling at their mini stone-baked flatbreads, dipped into home-made hummus and zinged-up pesto. We were sure that they’d be too fiddly to achieve at home, but we had a peek at the hummus recipe and it’s only three sentences long! Hardly more effort than buying it at the supermarket and ten times as tasty.

Vegetable of the month...cauliflower

We admit it. We were not overly excited when we discovered the star of the veggie stall this month is the knobbly bobbly cauliflower. With a reputation for being a little pale, nondescript and perhaps even – dare we say it – bland, half the challenge is deciding how to sneak it on to the menu.

Determined not to be beaten we checked out a few of our favourite foodie haunts and were ready to eat our words. First, we found this purple variety at A Cozy Kitchen. Apparently, it’s exactly the same as white cauliflower (it’s colour is caused by anthocyanin, the same antioxidant group found in red cabbage), but so much more beautiful.

Oh, what's that sound?! Our stomachs were definitely rumbling at Sprouted Kitchen’s caramelised cauliflower soup, which combines creamy cauliflower with crunchy nuts. Tasty.

Nicky from Delicious Days has also roasted hers, but she’s added some punchy spices and a yoghurty herby dip, which looks anything but bland.

Have you got a recipe for making a special cauliflower dish? Let us know we would love to hear.

Sip some blueberry vodka lemonade

Spring is in the air, and we were daydreaming about picnics and casual al fresco suppers when this recipe caught our eye.

Jennifer from Keep It Simple Foods has breathed new life into traditional lemonade in her blueberry vodka lemonade recipe. The berry vodka gives a vibrant hue and a grown-up alcohol kick to the springtime favourite.

Visit her blog to find out how it’s done. We’re already pondering over which other fruits we can try this out with. All we need now is some sunshine to put our plans into action!

Free recipe: perfect profiteroles

Everyone loves profiteroles but why not try adding a little summery fruity freshness with sliced strawberries and crumbled raspberry cream then drizzle with warm chocolate sauce or a fresh berry sauce – see Cook’s Tip. Serves 4 Preparation time: 35 minutes Cooking time: 15-18 minutes

Profiteroles 150ml (¼ pint) water 50g (2oz) butter 65g (2½ oz) plain flour 2 medium eggs ½ tsp vanilla essence Sauce 150g (5oz) dark chocolate, broken into pieces 150ml (¼ pint) semi skimmed milk 2 tbsp icing sugar ½ tsp vanilla essence Filling 150ml (¼ pint) double cream 100g (4oz) 0% fat plain Greek yogurt ½ tsp vanilla essence 2 tbsp icing sugar, plus a little extra to decorate 150g (5oz) raspberries 225g (8oz) strawberries, hulled, sliced

1 Preheat the oven to 200oC (400oF), Gas Mark 6. Lightly grease a large baking sheet. 2 Pour the water into a saucepan, add the butter then heat gently until the butter has just melted. Bring to the boil then take off the heat and sift in the flour. Mix together then put the pan back on the heat and cook, stirring, until the mixture makes a smooth ball. Leave to cool for 15 minutes. 3 Beat the eggs with the vanilla then gradually beat into the cooled choux pastry in the pan, or transfer to a food processor if you’d rather. Beat until really smooth then spoon into a large piping bag fitted with a 1.5cm (3/4 inch) plain piping tube. Pipe about 20 balls on to the greased baking sheet, leaving space between them. 4 Bake for 15-18 minutes until well risen and golden. Make a slit in the side of each choux puff to let the steam escape then put back into the turned off oven for 3- 5 minutes until crisp then take out and leave to cool. 5 To make the sauce, add the chocolate, milk and sugar to a small saucepan and heat gently, stirring occasionally until the chocolate has melted and the sauce is smooth. Stir in the vanilla. Sprinkle surface with a little caster sugar if not serving immediately so that a skin doesn’t form. 6 Whip the cream until it forms soft swirls then fold in the yogurt, vanilla and sugar. Crumble in the raspberries and briefly fold together. 7 Slit the choux puffs almost in half, arrange the sliced strawberries over the base of each one then top with a spoonful of raspberry cream. Press the lids back in place then arrange on serving plates. Dust lightly with sifted icing sugar and serve drizzled with warm chocolate sauce.

Cook’s tip The cooked choux puffs can be made the day before and kept in an airtight tin then fill and serve with sauce when you need them.

Cook’s tip For kids or adults who don’t like dark chocolate then use half dark and half milk chocolate for a lighter tasting sauce or why not drizzle with an easy berry sauce made by pureeing 225g (8oz) strawberries and 150g (5oz) raspberries pureed together then press through a sieve before serving.