Banana-Mixed Nut Espresso Smoothie

I was never one to turn down cake, especially if I was alone with it; if I was able to bite into its soft crumb with my gaping mouth that struggles to keep the frosting off my nose. On other days, it is the butt of a baguette with salted butter and a sticky glob of honey, scarfed down in seconds until there is none. 

It has been weeks. Three of them. No sugar, no yeast, only discipline. Surprisingly, at least to me, I am a happier human. I have more energy. I smile more often. It almost feels like a better side of myself has decided to drop by. 

On a Saturday, I dropped by the farmer's market at Arkan where I ran into these ladies running a branded booth, Fino's, that made all kinds of nut butters. For a moment in which I moped, I was told that they add honey to their products. A little heavy-hearted, I asked a question; the kind of question that would normally irritate me. 

Out loud, higher pitched voice: "Do you have anything that is unsweetened? No sugar? No honey? Nothing?"
Old Me to New Me: "Are you really turning into that woman on a diet/with an allergy/that can't accept a product the way it is and buy or walk away?"

But it turns out that people are nice sometimes (or maybe I need to socialize more often) and that these ladies do cater to my selfish needs. I ended up with a mixed nut butter; dense, smooth, rich, clean, good. I'm sold.  

Banana Espresso Smoothie
You'll need:
400 grams of frozen sliced bananas
2 1/2 heaped tablespoons of mixed nut (almond, hazelnut, cashew) butter
2 shots of espresso (Substitute: 1 1/4 tablespoons of espresso powder)
1 1/2 cups of milk
7-10 ice cubes, depending on the size
Honey to sweeten, optional (I did not use any so will be unable to give a measure.)

Blend, espresso, bananas, milk, mixed nut butter and ice. Serve.

Granitas for Summer's End

As featured in The Egypt Monocle

My sweet tooth was a late bloomer with a so-so desire to occasionally inhale shortbread biscuits, chocolate mousse and carrot cake — in that order of preference. Away from those, there was little that captured my attention.

I was the child at the party that might forgo a slice of birthday cake topped with a clean cut of the marzipan superhero’s head. I’m still the person at the wedding who really doesn’t want any sharbat, who’d rather not have the sugar-coated almonds offered when a baby is born, who’d be a dull partner at a cupcake shop.

As I grew older and gave way to my appetite, my sugar cravings leaned mostly toward the frozen kind: ice cream, popsicles, sorbet (which comes from the Arabic word sharbat), semifreddo, granita, and recently, ais kacang, the Malaysian shaved ice dessert with peanuts, sweet corn, red beans and a generous drizzle of thick condensed milk.

These frozen desserts stand out as distinct memories:

1. the, unapproved-by-mom strawberry popsicle of my Cairene childhood summer in 1991, sold in a clear plastic tube that you’d have to dig for in your neighborhood grocer’s aging deep freezer that smelled like cheese. Nothing was more artificial, but with the thrill of eating it behind my mother’s back in the corner of our building’s courtyard, right under the balcony where she sat, nothing was ever sweeter.

2. the crema gelato I ate in Rome in 1995 after one of many pizzas. I am still on the hunt for its equal and being 11 at the time, I cannot for the life of me remember where I ate it.

3. the moment I realized that my date who had taken me to Ramses Hilton’s Windows on the World in the early 2000s was not the man for me when he asked, me already half-way through my bitter lemon sorbet, why they were “serving ice cream in the middle of dinner”.

4. fried ice cream and caramel sauce with my dad as the ceremonious closing to our Chinese dinner; later the memory resurfacing as I sat alone at Genting Highlands theme park with my own freshly fried ice cream, cold in the center, looking up at my husband and step-kids screaming from the top of a crazy ride.

5. walking into Stavolta, the gelato store in Maadi, and taking a moment to happily embrace the fact that we Cairenes had a place that was finally using up the ingredients around us to create among their flavors ones that taste like the many pleasant smells of Egypt: sweet-smelling guavas bursting from the cup, karkade scoops that are delicate and could easily replace our traditional cold jug of karkade.

Now today, I didn’t have enough cream to make ice cream and I didn’t have an ice cream maker to pull off the smoothest sorbet so instead, I made a granita — essentially effortless except for the fact that you need to be at home for a few hours to get this done. Granitas can be dressed up or down to use as you please. Your guests will be thankful for being served this on a hot summer day and you can use the liquid you prefer to make it — fruit juice, coffee or one of those stronger drinks for adults only. It’s rustic, it’s textural and it melts on your tongue. Experiment with the basic idea – blend, freeze, rake — to find your balance and to determine how coarse you like it. This particular granita brings with it notes of the coming fall and scents of a warm carrot cake.

Orange-Carrot Granita
You’ll need:
450 grams of carrots, peeled
300 ml of fresh orange juice
300 ml of cocktail juice, unsweetened
2 drops of orange blossom water
A small piece of ginger, peeled, around 3 cm
¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon of ground cloves
3 tablespoon of honey

Finely dice the peeled carrots and the ginger. Throw them into a blender. Add the orange juice and cocktail juice then pulse making sure your blender is sealed well. Add the honey, ground cinnamon and orange blossom water then blend once more until smooth.

Strain the mixture using a fine mesh strainer then pour it into a shallow baking dish. After pouring, your mixture should be around 2.5-3 cm thick. If it’s thicker than that, it will take a much longer time to freeze. Place your baking dish in the freezer then freeze, removing it from the freezer after 45 minutes to rake the mixture with a fork. Repeat this step every half an hour after that. Try to avoid scratching the bottom of your baking dish with a fork. Don’t forget the corners because they harden quickly. The final texture should be fine, fluffy and light. Mine froze in around 2½ hours. Each freezer is different and so you will have to look out for when it’s ready.

If you prefer, you can space out the times you rake to end up with bigger crystals.

Remove from the freezer 10-15 minutes before serving, depending on the weather. When you’re ready to serve, rake with a fork to collect the layers of shaved ice. Serve in glasses that have been chilled in the refrigerator.

Figs & Fear

As featured in The Egypt Monocle

I stepped into the kitchen, freshly cleaned for us, the new tenants from Egypt. Grey corian countertops, white cabinets and an aging fridge welcomed me into the square room that I would now force myself to enter routinely. Dishes would eventually pile up and we would, sooner than later, need to stop eating out like tourists every night.There were no mommies to send the newly married couple food to hoard in our freezer. 

There was no Cairo where I lived in the office and everything was delivered. This was the reality of things. For my first week in Malaysia, there was only a fancy supermarket across the street and shelves to fill to inhabit this space I’d learn to call home.

This is how I started cooking — out of obligation and the need to learn a new skill that I didn’t expect would keep me entertained.At first, I dumped ingredients familiar to me into the shopping cart, reaching out for things I’d see in my mother’s kitchen. I started stocking spices in bulk and bought herbs in quantities so absurd, they’d go to waste. It would take a while before I learned to properly use these integral elements I had lying around, but after weeks of cutting chicken like a caveman, overcooking beef and under-baking cake, I got the hang of it, albeit with a little help from the internet, some classes and a few aggressive songs blaring on my kitchen speakers.

Today, you could say that I was lucky to be allowed that faraway space to create, to absorb from my foreign surroundings and remove myself from the way things were done back home; but I wouldn’t agree. I would tell you that it was not Malaysia that drove me to find my devotion for cooking but instead, a longing to dislodge a disability of mine, a fear caught at the base of my throat, that of never being able to feed myself properly in my own home.

I have been approached by many wanting to cultivate their kitchen skills — through emails, at dinner parties, in passing. Each used it as an opportunity to find out what it was that made me “kitchen-confident” but in truth, there are no secrets, only a few additional observations that helped me.

Read: The more I got into those books and online articles, the faster I understood technique.

Practice: The faster you’re able to quarter a whole chicken, the quicker you’ll be able to progress to levels that require lesser amounts of fear.

When looking at a food item, think of different uses for it. A bottle of milk is not designed to be an afterthought in your morning coffee but a silky béchamel, a trembling crème caramel and with a little added acidity, paneer, a non-melting Indian cheese.

Realize that many dishes are simple to make despite their intimidating appearances while others that look casually thrown together are not so easy to achieve.

This recipe may interest your guests in Ramadan, one that is bold in flavor, basic in concept and does not require much skill, just some focus. You can use it as a jam for your midnight snack, stir its chunkiness into yogurt, or serve it with a creamy scoop of vanilla ice cream after iftar. Purée it and you’ll have a rich syrup that would comfortably pair with fried qatayef, a dollop of thick cream and a sugary drizzle of a karkade and fig blend to top it all off.

Spiced Karkade & Fig Compote

You’ll need
4 cups of prepared karkade, sweetened
8 cloves, whole
3 whole bay leaves
⅛ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
A pinch of ground black pepper
6 grams of ginger, minced
360 grams of dried figs
The juice of 1 lime
70 grams of almonds
1½ teaspoon of white sesame

1 teaspoon of nigella seeds

In a medium-sized pot, pour in the karkade along with the cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, ginger and bay leaves. Bring to a rapid boil then lower the heat and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime, quarter the dried figs and roughly chop the almonds. Set the figs aside. In a separate pan, toast the almonds lightly. Remove from the pan then add the sesame and nigella seeds to the same pan and toast until the white sesame seeds begin to change color.After your 20 minutes have passed, remove the bay leaves and cloves then add the lime juice. Add the figs to the karkade then the almonds, sesame and nigella seeds. Stir then simmer on low heat for 40 to 45 minutes. Once your compote becomes sticky and begins to pull away at the sides, remove from the heat and leave to cool before serving. To store, spoon into a jar and seal tightly.

A blueberry cake and flashes of color

As featured in The Daily News Egypt

I grew up wearing shades of watermelon, tangerine and aqua; colors I was taught by my mother. In our home, there was never use of the unadorned word blue, only baby blue, navy blue, royal blue and petrol. This is how she saw the world and what drove us, my sister and I, to look out for new colors and to use them regularly; compelling color names like vermillion and viridian were the winners where I was concerned.

Only later did I notice that the everyday brown never made an appearance in our house. The closest we had gotten to finding something “brown” in our closets or rooms was in fact a cross between terra cotta and rust. When winter would come and the city’s people would shed their summer spirit to shroud themselves in tones of wet sand and dusty leaves, my mother would be the lady crossing the street in the scarlet coat.     

 

On a clear day in Abu Dhabi, she took me, her newly turned eleven year old, shopping. Enthusiastically, I picked up a brown button-down dress and asked her what she thought, hoping that she would agree that it was the dress for me. “I don’t like brown,” she said as she walked a few steps ahead to lift up a dusty rose blouse, delicate and demure.

Soon after my university years, I took a trip alone to Abu Dhabi to reconnect with friends and the city I had seen solely through the biased eyes of my childhood. There, I bought a fitted brown t-shirt and several other brown garments that surprised my mother upon my return and me for breaking away if only a little from my love of standard black.

In my mid-twenties, I started taking fewer photos of muted faces in black and white and more photos of food, dipped in gloss and drenched in color. It was apparent through time that brown did not hold well in still life and could rarely come alive aside from molding itself into the egotist of brown food, chocolate. For the simplest and most delicious of brown foods, sauces included, I would have to learn to make them shine; to garnish with parsley, with julienned shallots, with cheese tuiles.   

But brown dishes are not the only thing I learned to eat voraciously while shielding my mess of a plate from my scrutinizing camera lens.

I am yet to photograph a bone-in shank that looks appetizing and a while back, I struggled with coconut milk mussels before getting a shot that would flatter them with their quivering soft insides, a tell-tale sign that we may not all be beautiful on the inside.

Some foods shine on their own and excel under a macro lens while others struggle, pleading with you to place them on a layered table setting with a few star props in natural light. When photographing your food for others, it is imperative to do some organization for it is never a picture-perfect snapshot moment, even when it’s the most vibrant of red velvet cakes.

Find your grandmother’s detailed silver spoons and old cookbooks to place in the background, even tattered pages and parchment paper work to give your photo some depth. Consider your surroundings and learn to work with them. You will find that you need not an awe-inspiring place to work in; just some stable sunlight, a reliable camera, a simple dish and your imagination.

Chosen as Gourmet Live's Image of the Week May 9, 2012

Double Blueberry Cake
You’ll need:
1 cup of self-raising flour
100 grams of butter
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
1/2 cup of sugar (You can reduce this to 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup of fresh blueberries
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

For the blueberry sauce:
2 cups of frozen blueberries
½ cup of water
½ cup of sugar
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
The zest of one large lemon
2 tablespoons of cornstarch + 2 tablespoons of water
½ teaspoon of vanilla extract

Begin by creaming the butter and the sugar in a stand mixer until completely blended and fluffy. Add the eggs and egg yolk and mix again for 30 seconds. Add the flour gradually, allowing every ¼ cup to incorporate into the batter before adding the next ¼ cup. Scrape the sides of your bowl every now and then to make sure everything goes in. Pour in the vanilla essence. In a separate bowl, toss the blueberries in some extra flour until coated then add to the batter. This will allow the blueberries to hold their place avoiding having them pool at the bottom of your cake tin. Add to a small greased loaf tin. This is not a big cake and is meant to finish quickly in both prep work and eating time. Pop your cake into the oven at 170 degrees Celsius. There is no need to preheat. Allow the cake to bake for approximately 45-50 minutes (until a knife comes out clean). When done, remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before extracting from the tin.

Blueberry sauce: In a medium-sized saucepan, combine the blueberries, water, sugar and lemon juice on medium heat. Stir often until it comes to a low boil. In a separate bowl, stir the cornstarch into 2 tablespoons of cold water until dissolved. Gradually stir the cornstarch into the blueberry mixture. Simmer on medium-low heat and stir every so often until the sauce has reduced and is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. This should take around 7 minutes. Take the sauce off the heat when read and stir in the freshly grated lemon zest and vanilla extract. If you’re using vanillin, stir it in when adding the cornstarch. Feel free to add more sugar; some blueberries are not as sweet as others. To thin out your sauce, add in a few drops of hot water at a time and stir until you reach your desired consistency.

Poached Pears in Spiced Karkadeh

There was a minor issue troubling me concerning a certain bottle of karkadeh lounging lazily in our fridge. No one wanted to drink it. We had both had our fair share of it in Ramadan and this bottle menacingly promised to stay until next Ramadan. I couldn't pour it down the sink because I carefully carry Karkadeh all the way from Cairo. It would be a little more than insulting to my poor suitcase to throw it away. So today, I had two pears left and decided to poach them in a spiced karkadeh. It turned well.  Really well.  

Below is my column featuring this recipe in The Daily News Egypt dated Saturday, 15th, 2011.

This week in Egypt carries the weight of crisp white cotton shrouds and the shiny wooden caskets of those we lost.

Silence descends as I listen to the news, to the wailing of women at the morgue abruptly deserted in life by their sons. I, stunned by the recent events at Maspero, position my fingers on the keyboard to make my mark, pound out my thoughts into 140 characters on the Internet. Three days in, it never comes and instead, a rising fear throttles my voice.

A Spanish proverb springs to mind - don't speak unless you can improve on the silence. I stay quiet but is the stagnantly comfortable Egypt I left behind three years ago gone or does it remain?

Throughout the past 8 months, I have often become despondent – my faith slowly faltering until I could only see loss in the promotion of new ideas revolving around our cuisine, our food culture and in keeping our land clean, away from the chemical companies who, once producing agent orange and stain-resistant carpets, are now feeding us genetically modified foods and controlling a high percentage of American seed. Since almost complete domination of the American markets, these companies view Africa as an ideal spot to continue to bring close the complete control of the world's food supply.

How can we protect ourselves let alone the well-being of our farmers? How many of us are educated enough and more importantly, interested enough to be aware of the dangers concealing themselves behind the pretty picture of strong and vibrant corn fields? How many of us know about giant agri-business, corporate farming and how it's run?

What I'm sure about is that we will start seeing many smaller farms looking to gain a place in the huge agricultural market instead of competing with the big boys. Our agriculture will be sold off and owned by others because of something as simple as selling the rights to our old seed to create a new genetically modified one.

And what of the homeless children? If they aren't going to school or learning anything at public school for that matter, will we leave them to grow into glue-sniffing, prostitute-peddling adults or what we now like to call “thugs”? With the number of NGOs in Egypt, I'm surprised that not one has created a cooking school to teach homeless children and give them careers, turning them away from the grime of fixing cars for almost nothing or worse.

The kitchen will teach almost anyone work ethic – show up on time, stay sober, keep clean, overcome anger and you're set. Sadly, we are not so concerned about our homeless just as we aren't about our farmers. Egyptian food industry plays no part in helping out the community, away from serving free food during Ramadan and if they are, no one knows about it.

The upcoming generations need skills or they'll end up in the street, fighting for a mere semblance of a life and dying an untimely death. Again.

I, like many Egyptians, have ideas but don't know what to do with them anymore or where to start so instead, I sharpen my own skills, hoping that one day I'll be able to do more good with them than cook in my own kitchen and talk to anyone who'll listen.

Trying, as ever, to come up with better ideas for the ingredients presented to us in Egypt, this pear recipe put a skip in my step until noticing, only two nights later, that most Egyptians won't notice my pure and organic pear, steeped in deep red, just like they aren't noticing the blood-stained sidewalks because they choose not to look. For what it's worth, try this out and share in this week's bitterness tinged with a sweet glimpse of hope.

Poached Pears in Spiced Karkadeh

You'll need:

2 medium sized pears
3 cups of pre-made karkade
1 cup of water 
2 cinnamon sticks
3 star anise 
1.5 tablespoons of candied mixed peel

Peel your pears leaving the stalk on. If you prefer, you can halve the pears through the center. Pour the karkade and water into a large pot. Add the cinnamon and star anise. Bring to a quick boil and reduce the heat immediately. Allow it to reach a gentle simmer. Plop your pears and candied peel into the simmering karkade. Cover the pot. Turn your pears occassionally to make sure they're fully immersed in the liquid. Cook for 15-18 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove from the pot. Serve hot with warm karkadeh or cold with some nuts and ice cream. 

FEATURED ON FOODBUZZ TOP 9 (OCTOBER 11, 2011)

Turons for Luz and Gojee

Below is my column featuring this recipe in The Daily News Egypt dated Saturday, October 1st, 2011.

“Already ma'am?” laughed Luz.      

I had outgrown yet another pair of shoes only recently purchased; and Luz, our Filipino housekeeper, calmly tidying my room, couldn't contain her chuckle. I, an 11 year old, was passing down spanking new shoes again to a lady gradually growing shorter than me despite the long years of life she had lived ahead of my birth. My feet just wouldn't stop growing.

“We can't keep up,” my mother laughed along while I internally panicked that I would soon be dubbed Bigfoot, unaware that my menacing feet would soon halt their unruly lengthening and allow the rest of my body to play catch-up.

Between the blossoming but often contradicting interest in boys and food and counting down to becoming a teenager, eleven was an age of befuddlement. Mundane routine kept me in check: donning my uniform and heading to school, scheming to gain in popularity, vaguely listening to the teacher, recess, doodling in class and returning home for lunch.

Lunch was a bizarre event. My sister and I were still adjusting to having our own apartment away from our familiarity with hotel rooms and room service. When served what my mother made for breakfast one morning in our new kitchen, my sister looked at her plate and exclaimed, raising her eyebrows as if to declare something of monumental importance, “I didn't order this.”

The displeased expression on my mother's face told us that there was to be no ordering in our house. We were to be raised as normal children and living at the hotel was a transitional phase because we all needed our own rooms and a kitchen. From now on, we were to visit the hotel but not reside there. Daddy worked there and that's about it. A strong determination in my mother's eyes confirmed that we were not to become spoiled nor bratty.

Every afternoon, seated at our dining table, I would pretend to be older than my years and babble with anyone who would listen. My sister, in between singing funny little songs, would spend a good fifteen minutes on each bite and Luz, now finished with our housework, would bring a banana and hot sauce to the table to eat with us before heading home. It didn't matter what we were eating; from molokheyya to stewed okra, we would be exposed to the wild taste buds of Luz, ones we hadn't yet developed or thought of even attaining one day. Fusion Filipino-Egyptian cooking was being constructed right in front of us but we were too young to think beyond “ Look at what she's mixing together. How weird.”

Did we know much about the Filipino diet? No, not beyond noodles and the sweet Filipino polvorons, a buttery powdered milk candy, that Luz would bring us as a pasalubong, or gift for overseas friends, on her return from her yearly vacation in the Philippines.

Pasalubong in Tagalog literally means “something meant for you when you welcome me back” so we would welcome her back by chomping on the sweets as she recanted stories of busy streets and karaoke-loving people, welcoming us into a culture far from our own.

Although at the time we weren't ready to experiment with our palates, Luz is today someone I think back to when I am in need of some inspiration in the kitchen.

As I was trawling for recipes, I came across a Filipino street snack that is as simple as it is scrumptious. Called a turon, this snack is essentially a banana wrapped in spring roll pastry, also known as lumpia in the Philippines. Each vendor puts their own spin on the mighty turon. Some will add jack-fruit while others might grate some cheddar cheese or coconut onto the banana before sealing the wrapper.

I chose to eliminate these flavor combinations and opted to bring some heat to these crispy rolls by utilizing the Indonesian long pepper I had lying around as well as freshly ground black pepper.

If Luz was coupling the creaminess of bananas with the red hot heat of Tabasco sauce and roll it around in Arabic flat bread then dip it into a bowl of Molokheyya, it was inevitable that I, too, would one day add some heat to the sweetness of a fruit I've never known to mix with much.

Honey-pepper Banana Roll

You'll need:

3 ripe bananas

2 tablespoons of brown sugar 

12 spring roll wrappers

Vegetable oil, for deep-frying

To dip:

1/2 tablespoon of honey, per roll

1/2 a teaspoon of ground Indonesian long pepper

1 teaspoon of ground black pepper per roll

Peel the bananas and split them down the middle. Cut lengthwise down every half. Place each banana slice on an individual large spring roll wrapper (21.5x21.5cm). Sprinkle the banana with some sugar. Fold the top of the wrapper over the banana then fold the right and left sides and roll until the wrapper is tight and closed. Moisten the top flap with water to seal. Heat your oil over medium heat. Deep fry until golden brown. Drizzle with honey and black pepper. Serve hot. 

This turned out to be really good stuff. The banana melts with the sugar and becomes custardy and soft. Really good stuff. Concerning other things, I am now a contributor on Gojee, a website I saw a while ago and loved instantly. I had no idea I would be part of such an amazing team and was happy to have discovered Gojee right from the start. When they rolled out the new list of contributors I was surprised to see such popular blog names contributing along with tiny little Buttered-Up here. If you're ever craving something, head over there and plug it in. You'll find many, many ideas.  

Dragonfruit-kiwi smoothie & a post about "Me!"

Who needs to start incorporating more fruit into her diet? Me! Who needs to start doing it in a way that doesn't involve as much chewing? Me! Who needs to stop being lazy to bite into an apple? Me! Who doesn't like raw apples very much? Me! Who needs to start loving fruit wholeheartedly? Me! Who loves the little seeds in kiwis? Me! Who thought of doubling the seed love by doubling the seedy fruit? Me! Who found the dragonfruit? Me! Who used the no-skills part of her brain to make a smoothie? Me!  

Dragonfruit-Kiwi Smoothie

Serves 2

1 small dragonfruit, roughly diced

2 kiwis, sliced

The juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon of sugar

10-12 ice cubes

Chop up the dragonfruit and kiwi. Put them in the blender. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon onto the fruit and sprinkle with sugar. Add the ice cubes. Blend until smooth and serve. 

Done.

Oaty-Cherry Crumble

"All the world in one grain of sand
And I've blown it
All my world in one grain of sand
And you own it
Black cherry, black cherry, stone
Black cherry, black cherry"

-Black Cherry, Goldfrapp

LADIES (And MEN who like to cook or eat or have a strange obsession with food photos)! How about we pretend that the Internet is the world, nothing else exists, and we all get along just like we do online? How about we pretend we never had to find out how babies come out of mommies' bodies? How about we pretend we were never asked that question as adults ever? How about we pretend to be a little healthy and add cherries and oats to the two evils: flour and butter? How about it, ladies (and men who fit into the long descriptive phrase above)? Play pretend with me.

Pretty cherries. Yummy cherries.

Pop your cherries. Or rather, pit your cherries. Pamper them by drizzling them with some vanilla and water.

Crush the almonds. I spared them the torture of skinning them. So kind of me.

Mix your dry ingredients together in a small bowl and mix in the butter with your fingers. I love the feeling. I wouldn't use a mixer to do this EVER. It's so pointless even if you're making a bigger quantity.

Pop it in the oven for 25 minutes. It starts oozing pretty colored juice (that's not so pretty once it stains). 

Oh look at that. No, no. Not the water on the tray. Look at the edges. Look at the natural gooeyness of it all. Revel in it.

Eat! I get happy when I make something I can't say "pig out" to. It makes you feel that little extra better about yourself. Extra points if you eat it with yoghurt! 

You'll need (per bowl/ramekin):

5 to 7 pitted cherries

1 heaped tablespoon of all purpose flour

5-7 crushed almonds

1.5 tablespoons of rolled oats

1.5 tablespoons of brown sugar

A pinch of salt

1 tsp of water

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

1 tablespoon of cold butter

Extra butter/oil for greasing

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease each bowl or ramekin. I didn't have enough cherries to fill my bigger ramekins. Throw in your cherries into the serving/baking dish. Combine all your dry ingredients and mix them. Add the cold butter and mix it into the dry ingredients. It'll stick to everything and become... crumbly! Add the dry, buttery mixture to the cherries and bake for 20-25 minutes. Like I said earlier, extra points for yoghurt. Penalties for ice cream. We're trying to pretend we're good to our bodies, remember?