Rosemary olive oil cake

We're always up for sampling unusual flavour pairings. How else are we supposed to find new favourites? This recipe for rosemary and chocolate olive oil cake from The Flour Sack definitely falls into the 'experimental' category, and we can't wait to try it out.

Baker Brooke says that this is the perfect snack cake. We always like to have a home-made cake tucked away in a tin ready for any unexpectected visitors or a nibble with a cup of tea in the afternoon, and this recipe has us sorted for this week.

Vegetable of the month ... cucumber

Maybe it's because we're so used to just bunging them in green salads. Maybe it's because they're simply not that photogenic. Whatever the reason, when we started hunting out cucumber recipes for July's vegetable of the month, we had much more trouble than usual. Thank goodness we persevered, though, because we've turned up some delicious new cucumber recipes for you to get excited about.

Kicking off our round up is this frankly beautiful cucumber salad from Epicurean Mom. Blogger Katie's recipe uses crunchy veggies and a light, zingy dressing, then makes it all a bit special with edible flowers.

Secondly we have tzatziki from Pinch My Salt. We're not sure how to pronounce it and we had to check the spelling twice, but we are very happy eating it. Tangy and creamy, it's the perfect dipping partner for toasted pita bread and mouthwatering spooned over barbecued meat in a Greek-style wrap.

To finish off, we thought we'd share some cucumber drinks with you. For health-conscious readers, check out Cafe Johnsonia's cucumber, melon and kiwi juice recipe. It's blogger Lindsey's favourite drink, and boasts an ingredient list that takes care of all of your five-a-day in one fell swoop. Impressive.

For those of you that are less well behaved, we're also intrigued by Cookie + Kate's cucumber cocktails. Choose between Cucumber Caipiranha and Cucumber Cooler with watermelon (we're aware of the excessive amount of alliteration going on in this last paragraph) for a refreshing end to a summer picnic.

Nibble on a fresh berry tartlet

Berry tartlets are a wonderful, simple way to use fresh fruit. We found these little beauties on Little Upside Down Cake (well worth a peek - the photography alone was enough to get all our stomachs rumbling).

Follow blogger Sanda's example and make up the pastry cases and creamy mascarpone, then let your picnic-mates assemble their own tartlets, tumbling a mixture of berries and crunchy chopped pistachio on top for a relaxed but delicious end to your meal.

Try the perfect lemon curd

On her way home, The Novice Chef blogger Jessica got distracted by an elderly gentleman selling fruit from his truck. Said gentleman (in red braces) sweet-talked her into buying '39 million lemons'. And so, the resourceful Jessica came up with this recipe for lemon curd.

Because we're suckers for a cute story, and because Jessica calls it 'simply perfect' and because the sunny yellow colour makes us smile, we're sharing her recipe with you.

Mix up your tea break

We're firm believers that there are very few problems that can't be fixed by a good cup of tea.

Even though nowadays there seem to be more types of tea than there are days in the year, our interest was still piqued when we stumbled upon a beginners guide to tea mixology at Yellow Bird Yellow Beard.

Like chamomile? Love mint? Well, now there's no need to make that agonising choice, because we can have both together! Guest blogger Lauren from The Perfect Pear has done all the leg work for us and shared the best combos so we can avoid a nasty oh-that-really-doesn't-work surprise, but we still can't wait to get experimenting for ourselves.

Cool off with raspberry elderflower granita

What Katie Ate is one of our all-time favourite foodie blogs. Recipes that make our stomachs rumble plus utterly gorgeous photography equals the perfect blog, in our opinion.

Recently Katie posted up an American retro food special, and this raspberry elderflower grantia recipe  inspired by a New York Cocktail caught our eye (actually, most of the recipes did, but we're trying to be a little more focussed!).

We'll be serving this vibrantly-coloured granita as a refreshing desert on a balmy Summer evening. Pop over to What Katie Ate to see how it's done.

Treat yourself to nectarine honey cake

Mmm ... its been a while since we posted a yummy cake recipe on here, hasn't it? We love a sweet treat, and the latest addition to our 'to bake' list is this nectarine honey cake recipe from Good Things Grow. Soft and juicy nectarine, honey-sweet sponge and a hint of crunch from the brown sugar topping - we think this is the perfect summer pud. Baker Jacqui is convinced she could eat this cake all summer long, and we're inclined to agree.

Dry your leftover herbs

With a little luck, your window boxes should be exploding with fresh herbs any day now.

We’re expecting to be inundated with more herbs than we know what to do with (best to start the summer with a positive outlook), so this year, we’re going to dry our extras to make them last through the colder months.

If you’re wondering how to dry fresh herbs, pop over to Design Mom, where Lindsay of Café Johnsonia has guest posted a great guide. When the weather turns chilly, we’ll be following her example and harvesting our leftover herbs, hanging them out to dry in our kitchens and then tucking them away into our store cupboards ready for the winter.

Join in the Slow Food UK Week

News has reached our ears that next week is … Slow Food UK week! If you haven’t heard of the Slow Food movement, where have you been?

For those that have come to the party late, Slow Food is a non-profit, member supported organisation which reconnects people with where their food comes, so we can all make better choices about what to put on our plates.

This year, Slow Food has been creating links with chefs to champion local, sustainable ingredients, and that is what this year’s Slow Food UK week is all about.

From Monday 18th – Sunday 24th July, Slow Food invites you to feast on special menus from top UK chefs, get inspired by vibrant talks, or attend the first ever Slow Food Crawl. We’re definitely up for that last one (we’re assuming it doesn’t involve actual crawling).

Pop over to the Slow Food website to find out what’s going on near you.

Vegetable of the month ... peas

We love peas. Just as good from frozen as they are fresh, no chopping required and they cook in no time at all. What’s not to like?

Well, apparently, not everyone is such a fan of the tiniest of the vegetables. In a bid to change this, we’ve hunted around for the most exciting pea recipes (bear with us) to share with you.

First of all, peas and pasta. Everyone knows that peas go with carbonara but have you ever tried pea pesto? Nah, thought not. Recipe pro Deb from Smitten Kitchen has come up with a pea pesto recipe which looks super-simple and totally gorgeous. Pop over to her blog for a peek.

We can’t help but be intrigued by Beyond [the Plate]’s pea and ricotta spread. Blogger Danielle’s recipe combines creamy ricotta and sweet peas with roasted garlic to give an ‘earthy, aromatic kick’. We’ll be following her example and serving this on toasted bread for a light lunch with a difference.

There’s definitely something about peas that says Springtime. What do we like most about Spring food? Salads. And so, we present this lentil and shell pea salad recipe from La Buena Vida. This salad had been ramped up a notch with feta for creamyness, pistachios for crunch and mint to keep it fresh, and we cannot wait to try it out.

Have we converted you yet?

Click to see the rest of our vegetable of the month series!

Cool down with fruity ice cubes

We applaud anyone that can take the stress out of summertime entertaining. Bits of Taste’s idea for fruit ice cubes is a cool way to add a colourful twist to your drinks without having to faff around with fresh fruit and the like while your guests are waiting.

Make up a load in advance, then when people arrive, just pop 'em out of their moulds and into your glasses. Tah dah! Instant drama and a cool drink all in one. Cheers.

Bake up a storm with Jubilee cakes

If you’re living in the UK, you’ll know what’s happening this weekend. That’s right, Jubilee time! 60 years on the throne for Queen Liz! Street parties! Union flags everywhere! FOUR days off!

Phew. Exciting times. The proper British thing to do seems to be to mark the event with cake, and lots of it.

We’ll be baking up a storm, starting with a Jubilee sponge cake with blueberries and strawberries. Our favourite recipe comes from Edd Kimber, aka The Boy Who Bakes (is that name ringing any bells? Edd’s the man who had us all attempting macaroons back in series one of The Great British Bake Off).

To take along to our local street party, we’ll be trying out these Jubilee cupcake swirls à la The Magenta Cakes Blog. This looks like a super-easy way to achieve Union Jack style icing, but we’ll let you know how simple it really is once we’ve tried it.

Finally, we’ll be displaying our creations in style on their very own cupcake thrones. Or maybe not…

Do you have any impressive Jubilee cakes you’d like to share with us? Pop them on our facebook page for us all to coo over!

Share some sticky marmalade picnic bread

Enthused by yesterday's Etsy cutlery wrap discovery, we’ve spent all morning hunting out recipes for lovely nibbly food to take on all the picnics we’ll be having.

This marmalade picnic bread recipe from apt 2b baking is quite possibly the ultimate in picnic food. It combines bread and filling in one handy loaf which can be pulled apart for sharing. No need to pack sticky jam jars, knives or cutting boards! How clever.

So clever, in fact, it renders our new knife and fork wraps totally obsolete. Looks like we’ll have to extend our picnic food hunt a little longer…

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.