Are you ready for some sugar and spice and everything nice?

If you’re just starting your journey into creating a supercharged kitchen or need a cooking upgrade, it’s time to have a little look at your spice rack. It’s one of the first places to begin a kitchen adventure or help spark a love affair with food. If you let it, your spice rack or drawer can be one of your most loyal supporters in the kitchen.  Today I'm sharing how to build a spice rack and a delicious Cinnamon and Rhubarb cake recipe from my latest book Supercharge Your Life. 

There’s much more to a spice rack than salt and pepper (though, they’re pretty good too!). A spice rack can serve as a kaleidoscope palette of flavoursome dried herbs and spices. Each spice or herb can impart a unique flavour to your cooking. While you can use a spice on its own, there are ways to pair spices up to create and complement any of your culinary cuisines.

Before we get to the spices themselves, we need to start from the very top. One of the first things to be mindful of when creating a spice rack or drawer is looking at the space you have in your kitchen and noting what’s the most practical option for you. If you’re in need of a drawer, many homeware stores have rectangular storage baskets that can slide in and out of your pantry or cupboards and can be filled with all of the spices of your dreams. If you’re an upcycler like myself, you may make a perfect wooden box the home of your new spice collection.

When it comes to the spices themselves, you can either keep them in their original packaging, invest in some kitchen storage bag clips to reseal them after opening and avoid any spilling that’ll make you cupboards constantly smell like curries on the stove…. actually, if that’s the case, it’s a free candle that’ll make your house smell aromatic like you’re cooking curries all the time. Who wouldn’t want to live that life?  

Anyway, if you have space for a shelf or even a large walk-in pantry, you could dedicate a whole row to your spices using small screw-top preserving jars or the little spring-clip jars we spoke about earlier. To me, this is the ideal way to store spices, as it saves you time later fiddling through a spice drawer which can become a mess very easily. Before you ask, yes, your spices do deserve their own shelf because they’re seriously special and deserve to be treated that way (as individuals).  

Because my kitchen is the hub of my home and I spend a lot of my time creating recipes (and I’m also a Virgo so I’m usually somewhat over-organised ;), I have all of my spices in alphabetical order for ease of use. Don’t worry though, you don’t have to go that far if you don’t want to! Instead, you can use a jar for every spice you have and use a labeller or permanent marker to indicate which spice is which. There are many spices similar in colour, so good labelling will save you sniffing time in the long-run! Not only are glass jars super aesthetically pleasing, they also let you see which ones you need to top up before they run out. Depending on the look of your kitchen, stacked rows of spices in jars can be both stylish and practical. (more…)

Ciao Bellas!

Love is in the air… it's officially Valentines Day so what better time to share my Chocolate and Raspberry Smoothie Bowl recipe for your bae, your boo your BFF or you.

However you celebrate The Feast of St Valentine, make you and the ones you love feel special and show your appreciation by whipping up a delicious bowl of love, made with raw cacao and raspberries for the ultimate understated romantic gesture.

This sweet and rich smoothie bowl is filled with cacao, bananas and all-round goodness and can be enjoyed for breakfast, as a snack or even as a lip-smacking dessert.

Why choose to frequent confectionery aisles, when the superiority of a homemade bowl of feel good ingredients is so simple to achieve at home?

If you know me, you’ll know I’ll use any excuse to eat chocolate. I don’t even need an excuse. You know, because of the antioxidants… obviously…

I mean, who says you can’t eat chocolate for breakfast?

Not me. That’s for sure.

Because...

• Raw Cacao is overflowing with one of the world’s most deficient major minerals, magnesium. In fact, there’s no known source on earth that provides more.  Magnesium is essential in developing a strong healthy heart, can help to relax menstrual cramping, strengthen your bones and open up more than three hundred detoxification pathways in the human body.
• Raw Cacao is super-rich in antioxidants.  Ten percent of raw cacao powder is filled with them. They act as protective factors for the heart and circulatory system by increasing the ability of arteries to dilate, improving the functioning of the cells that line blood vessels and reducing the oxidsation of bad cholesterol (LDL).  Interestingly, dairy appear to counteract these amazing antioxidant effects; just another added reason you should try my smoothie bowl.
• Raw cacao= happier you= lots of loving! Thank Phenylthylamine (PEA), a chemical that’s released into the blood stream when we are sexually aroused, and abundant in the brains of happy people.   PEA is responsible for dopamine (the pleasure hormone), adrenaline and noradrenaline. When you eat cacao, your mental concentration will increase, livening up your attitude and increasing positive emotions such as joy, happiness and perhaps some hanky panky with the apple of your eye. Nudge nudge wink wink!

While berries and chocolate are obviously a loved-up, winning combination (hello chocolate covered strawberries!), if you’re looking for more smoothie combinations, these are some of my other favourites:

Maca + chocolate: frozen banana, coconut milk and maca powder smoothie, topped with nut butter, chia seeds and coconut.

Purple + crunch: frozen blueberry, spinach, banana and almond milk smoothie, topped with fresh berries and granola.

Mango + oats: gluten-free oats, coconut milk, banana, sea salt, chia and vanilla smoothie, topped with mango, cacao nibs and mint leaves (make the smoothie the night before for the oats to soak up the liquids and give the smoothie a lovely thick texture).

Matcha + pepitas: matcha tea powder, coconut milk, banana and mint smoothie, topped with pepitas (pumpkin seeds), sliced banana and cacao nibs.

Peanut butter + chocolate: banana, hazelnut, protein powder, cacao powder and almond milk smoothie, topped with hazelnuts, cacao nibs, pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and coconut flakes.

If you’re as obsessed with chocolate and berries as I am, this spoonable smoothie is from the pages of my new recipe book called Supercharge Your Life which has over 160 brand new recipes!

Chocolate and Raspberry Smoothie Bowl

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

• 2 frozen bananas
• 1 ripe avocado, peeled
• 125 g (41/2 oz/1 cup) raspberries
• 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
•  130 g (41/2 oz/1/2 cup) yoghurt or coconut yoghurt
• 125 ml (4 fl oz/1/2 cup) almond milk or milk of your choice

To top (your choice):
edible flowers, passionfruit, lilly pilly berries, banana, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, almonds, pepitas (pumpkin seeds), chia seeds, coconut flakes, cacao nibs, granola and/or nut butter

Method:

Whiz all the ingredients except the toppings in a high-speed blender until smooth and creamy. The mixture should have a spoonable consistency.

Pour into two bowls and decorate with your chosen topping(s).

Happy Vee Day,

Love Lee xo