Grapefruit and Thyme Wholewheat Spelt Loaf Cake {Happy New Year} {Vegan}

Happy new year to the extraordinarily fab people reading this!! Long time no see, eh? Since my last blog post all those many months ago I have visited seven countries, moved in to the house of fun with my favourite gal pals (minus you, Ellen), made new friends and lost one and embarked upon my most intense academic year yet. It's been a wild five months. I don't usually go in for all the stuff that comes with the start of our next rotation around the sun like resolutions yada yada but the latter half of 2014 has been... I'm going do it, feel free to shoot me for what I am about to type... a ROLLER COASTER (hahahaha my sincerest apologies) to say the least so I figured a little reflection wouldn't go amiss. I'm not gonna share my resolutions with you cos they are super duper lame for the most part BUT one of them is to BLOG MORE. In addition to scrawling what I want out of this year in my notebook, and in order to avoid beating myself up come the end of 2015 I also decorated a jar in which I will put bits and pieces, photographs, journal entry type things etc that represent achievements and all the good, exciting, lovely things that happen that quite often get overlooked because lets face it most of us are prone to dwelling on the negative things! This way I can feel warm and fuzzy when I empty the contents of the jar a year from now even if I can't check all the things off my list of resolutions! I can't take credit for the idea though, ta v much BuzzFeed!

Anywhoooo on the foodie blog front I figured what better time to get my blog back up on its feet than the start of the first month of the year? I had forgotten how much I loved trailing the internet, putting a recipe together piece by piece. Once my recipe began to take shape I got all excited the way I used to, rather than feeling exhausted thinking about the blog posts I should be writing. 

I decided for my first post of 2015 I wanted something fruity, maybe even zesty, rather than chocolatey or spicy. I wanted to move away from flavours associated with the holidays. I also wanted to try something I had never done before; like pairing fruit and herbs in a baked good which I know is doable cos ya know Top With Cinnamon's BEST EVER chocolate chip cookies have basil in em and Local Milk sticks herbs in her baked goods left right and centre! (each of those four words takes you to a different sweet recipe with a herb cameo)

Taormina, Sicily

In between finishing my exams, going to Italy, moving out, getting my results and planning mine and H's one month Europe backpacking trip we embark upon in less than a week there really has not been much time for baking or bloggin'. Or cooking for that matter (baked beans will be removed from my weekly grocery list from here on out). But baking aside I thought I'd share with you some photos (a travel post on an up-to-now-solely-baking-related blog WHAT IS GOING ON!?) from my recent trip to Taormina, Italy where I was on super cool synthetic biology course listening to some of the smartest people i've ever been in the presence of, feeling slightly out of my depth as I was the baby in the room but having a whale of a time discussing science, eating great food and gelato everyday and making some really fab new pals. Snaps below!

Summer Berry and Cinnamon Buttermilk Cake

So it's finally getting sunny in Liverpool (today I even considered bare legs), we have unwillingly given up one hour of perfectly good sleeping time and winter seems to be on its way out (touch wood) so I thought I'd combine warming wintery cinnamon with summer berries to create spring. Turns out Averie Cooks had already made a cake where she combines buttermilk pancakes and blueberry muffins so I adapted the recipe slightly (and I really do mean slightly) to suit my needs. I replaced some of the sugar with soft brown sugar because I love the way it adds a slight caramel-y flavour to baked goods.

Sometimes you just want cake. Not icing, not filling, not cream, none of that fancy extra stuff. Just cake. This pretty fabulous mix of berries and cinnamon adds just enough excitement whilst still allowing this to be just cake. I say just when I mean tummy cuddlin' taste bud caressing cake. This is a soft, fluffy heaven in ya mouth kinda cake.

My blog has fallen by the way side somewhat in recent times, it's exam season you see so I am up to my neck in bacteriophage replication, apoptosis and immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motifs so this is just a quick post before my break ends and I have to go back to my life of coloured pens and yellow legal pads (there is something about colours and yellow paper that enforces knowledge better than black pens and white paper..).

The first two paragraphs of this post were written over a month a go so they make little sense now as the weather has got a little warmer and I have indeed by this point got the ol' pins out however I can still imagine myself eating this cake pretty damn clearly which is obviously a great sign and tbf the incessant wind (that may or may not be unique to Merseyside) warrants the use of cinnamon. Make the cake. You know you want to.