I’ve had enough sugar this week. Although I love to bake and have something sweet in the pantry to have with my evening cup of tea, after all the chocolate in the past week or so I just need some uncluttered and healthy food.

This is a very simple recipe, but one that is flavourful and healthy. The colours in the salad are just beautiful on their own. If it’s not fresh beetroot season where you are, you can use canned beetroot chunks or small whole baby beet if you wish. Sometimes I make this with the fennel, sometimes without, but either way it’s a bright spot on your plate.

We have beetroot growing in the garden at the moment, but they are barely more than a few red speckled leaves and struggling a little. The lovely beets that are in this recipe came from our local farmers market.

Roasting your beetroot tends to give them a richer flavour.

Beetroot, Fennel & Orange Salad

• 4 medium sized beetroot - cooked - you can either roast in the oven until tender or boil in a large pan until they are tender when skewered
• 2 Oranges - sliced
• Fennel - three baby fennel bulbs sliced julienne

Your beets should be cold for the salad

Slice your beets into chunks, oranges into segments and julienne your fennel

Combine gently and drizzle Orange vinaigrette over the top

Orange Vinaigrette

• Juice of one orange
• 1/4 cup of olive oil (can be omitted)
• 3 Tblspns balsamic vinegar
• snipped chives and fennel leaves
• salt and pepper to taste

Combine all the dressing ingredients in a jar with a screw top lid. Shake well to combine.

This Lamington packs a serious chocolate punch. How could I enter the Lamington contest over at Delicious Delicious Delicious and not submit the quintessential Australasian flavour combo. Jaffa. Which is Chocolate and Orange if you are not familiar with Kiwi/Aussie speak.

No frou frou and fluff on this Lamington, it’s a serious cake eaters task to get through one of these. It’s not a beauty contest winner - but if there was a tasty contest this would be giving those other Lamingtons a run for their money.

These are Jaffas. Little solid balls of chocolate surrounded by an intense orange candy shell.

They were the inspiration for this Lamington.

Double Chocolate Jaffa Lamingtons

The Orange Cake

I made up my favourite citrus and coconut cake, the recipe is over here on this page with some small modifications for the Lamington base.

• Use two Oranges - not Tangelos
• Bake in a 32 cm x 21 cm (13 inch X 9 inch) rectangular pan.
• Omit the syrup steps entirely.

It will not take as long to cook in this pan, so keep an eye on it.

Leave to cool completely before you attempt to make Lamingtons with it.

Orange chocolate Ganache

While your cake is cooking make your chocolate ganache. This is a soft ganache, it will not set firmly.

• 250 grams dark chocolate broken into squares
• 200 mls of cream
• 1 Tblspn Grand Marnier (optional- if using, reduce the amount of cream slightly)

Place your cream and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water. Stir continuously.

Once your chocolate starts to melt remove from the heat, stir until all your chocolate has melted and the chocolate and cream have amalgamated.

Add in your Grand Marnier if you are using it at this point.

Set aside roughly 1/2 a cup of the ganache and place in the fridge to cool and thicken. Leave the remainder at room temperature - you may need to reheat this slightly before you use it to dip your Lamingtons.

Coating your Lamingtons

• 6 Cadbury Flake chocolate bars - If you cannot get these coarsely grated chocolate is a fine substitution

Cut your orange cake into squares roughly 2 inches/4 cm square. Take some of your cooled ganache from the fridge and spread on the top of one square. Sandwich another on the top.

Gently reheat the ganache that was not in the fridge till it is a runny consistency.

Using two forks dip your sandwiched cake squares into the bowl of slightly warm ganache to coat. I used a small measuring cup and poured over the top of the squares to minimise the cake crumbs in the ganache. You can place them in the fridge for a few minutes at this point to solidify the ganache a little if you wish.

Roll into the crumbled chocolate flakes and pat more on gently where there are gaps. Place carefully on a plate.

Store in the fridge in a covered container for up to 3 days.

You’d like to see the inside?

I have to warn you, these are impossible to eat in a tidy manner, but then again, half the fun is licking copious amounts of chocolate off your fingers.

After roughly 10 minutes - this was all that was left of a batch of these.

It was hard to get a photo and my photography skills are pretty shaky at the best of times - seriously, they went so fast.

There was also another slight variation on the one you see above with Almond Gianduja as a filling.

I love these home-made Lamingtons. New Zealand and Australian Bakeries - please stop selling the stale and crusty versions! To those Bakeries that sell lovely moist Lamingtons - keep up the good work!

Forgotten cookies, a strange name for a little light cookie which is hardly forgettable. These are one of my favourite things to make. I suspect the reason they are called forgotten cookies is that you place them in the oven overnight, and forget about them while you sleep. When you wake up in the morning to open your oven, you find these delicious little morsels. Pristine white, with specks of chocolate peeking through.

The variations you can have with these lovely little cookies is only limited by your imagination.

For this batch I used Green and Blacks Organic Maya Gold (I try to buy fair trade chocolate) teamed up with small curls of Tangelo zest. Maya Gold is Orange and spice flavoured it’s just perfect with the dark chocolate.

Another favourite is coffee flavoured with mocha chocolate. Nuts are another nice addition to these little creations. Toasted silvered almonds or finely chopped Pistachios.

They are always an unexpected mouthful. People expect just a plain meringue - but are always surprised with the little dollops of chocolate.

Forgotten Cookies

• 2 egg whites, at room temperature
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup of caster sugar
• 1 tspn vanilla
• 3/4 of a cup of Dark chocolate - orange flavoured chopped into small chunks
• 1 Tblspn of citrus zest (fine)

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Beat the egg whites until stiff and gradually add in your sugar one tablespoon at a time until you have a glossy meringue. Fold in your vanilla, citrus zest and chocolate. I have to mention that I love the sound the chocolate and meringue make when you fold in the chocolate - listen for it…

Place on a baking tray which has a sheet of parchment paper on it, drop in teaspoonfuls - these do not need a huge amount of room to expand, you should get them all on two trays.

Turn the oven off

Leave overnight in the oven - they will be cooked by morning. Or alternatively for at least 4 hours. Store in airtight containers

These are wonderful just on their own, dipped into mascarpone, or sandwiched together with cream. They make a nice gift in pretty cellophane.

I want to tell you about the little green bowl (circa 1930) that is in the picture. I was poking about in a local antique shop and I spotted this little jelly mould in a shelf with a lot of other green glassware. It was kind of chunky and had little imperfections in the glass, but they all added to it’s character. It was labelled “Depression Glass” I thought it would be perfect for the cookies that I wanted to show you all.

The very helpful woman behind the counter said - “You know this has uranium in it right?” Well .. no I was not aware that crockery had uranium in it - ever! But apparently this lovely green glass has roughly 2% Uranium in it. It’s also known as Vaseline glass. If you put it under a UV light it will glow eerily, perfect for your next Halloween party!

A lot of depression glass was given away free with various grocery items and coupons could be traded in for pieces. It comes in a variety of colours. I love this little green dish, and I have a feeling I am going to be adding to my Depression Glass collection - plus it’s especially awesome to be able to say to people ” You know that has Uranium in it, right?” and then watch the expression on their face, much like the woman in the shop did to me.