Hemlines and Wholegrains: September 2015

LEEDS 2015

By Amelia Sinnott 08:59 uk cities, vegan festivals

Back in June me and Emily decided to do a little city trip and thought that Leeds would be a good choice as neither of us had visited before. It just so happened that a Vegan Fest was on in Leeds that weekend - how's that for timing!

The first place we stopped (even before the hotel) was for breakfast at Roots and Fruits. A cute little veggie cafe located in the Grand Arcade. I had a vegan breakfast with scrambled tofu, veggie sausages, chipotle beans, grilled tomato, spinach and nutmeg. Yum!

The Great Yorkshire Vegan Festival was held in the beautiful Leeds Town Hall and had a great selection of stalls selling and sampling all kinds of vegan products as well as food.

We went for an explore in the city centre and in The Corn Exchange which was full of independent stores and vintage shops :)

That evening we went to an incredible Thai restaurant Sukothai. Sadly I don't have an snaps though! In the evening we went to the fantastic Alchemist Bar where we drank our drinks from lab beakers and watched the bartenders make cocktails overflowing with smoke! The next day we had brunch in Mrs Atha where I had smashed avocado on toast - perfect! You can see pictures from all the aforementioned on my Instagram page.

We had a really great time! Definitely need to visit again and see more of Leeds :)

STRAWBERRY CHOCOLATE FUDGE

By Amelia Sinnott 10:09 chocolate, desserts, gift ideas

Okay so this blog post is slightly belated - about 3 months actually! I have had a lot going on in these last few months. I finished my degree (I actually had confirmation a few days ago that I passed - hooray!), I moved back home to Wales, I worked at the museum for a few weeks, then I moved to Berlin! So it has been pretty chaotic as you can imagine!

Before I left my final year placement in Leicester I wanted to make some little treats for my lovely co-workers and decided on this vegan chocolate cherry fudge recipe I found from Madeleine Shaw. I couldn't find any dried cherries so I went for dried strawberries instead (I think it was a pretty good choice!). I also bought the cute little gift boxes from Paperchase (find them here!)

You will need:

100g Almond butter
100g coconut oil (melted)
50g dried strawberries (cut into tiny chunks)
100g coco powder
100g agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt

Instructions:

Blend the almond butter and coconut oil in a food processor.
Add the rest of the ingredients except for the strawberries to the food processor and blend until combined.
Add the strawberries to the mixture and fold in
Add the mixture to a 24cm baking tin and put in the freezer for 30 mins
Remove from the freezer and cut into pieces.

They are absolutely delicious! The only thing was that they melted too quickly! So next time I would probably melt some chocolate to coat them in - so that they would be more like chocolate fudge sweets :)