Blood orange cake | v + gf 

You know how it is when you come back to work after you’ve been on vacation for a week? You’re sitting at your desk like: how do I start this computer? Do I have to answer all these emails? What time is lunch? Can I go home soon?

That’s pretty much me today. Not that I’ve been on vacation or anything, I just took almost the entire last week off from social media and the blog and everything. I had a lot of work to do, so it wasn’t like I just took a week off, but I decided to focus on everything but social media and the blog. Connecting with you guys is my no. 1 favorite thing to do, but sometimes I need to take a break from other peoples’ content, the information overload if you will. Just focus on other things. Find inspiration again.

Seeing a lot of lovely photos on Instagram can stress me out completely when I lack inspiration. Everyone else is super inspired and cooks fancy meals and takes lovely photos and me? Nah, just sitting here, having no idea what to cook, how to use my camera, how to do anything. When this happens, the best thing to do is to log off and just stay away from all impressions. Give it a few days and the inspiration will come back. At least that’s how it is for me.

One of my followers said this to me: in order to get inspiration and new ideas, you have to first put the seeds in the ground, then wait while the ideas grow before you can harvest them and use them. I loved this so much and it’s SO true. From now on I will definitely see ideas as plants, which need water and time to grow strong. You can’t expect to harvest oats every day, so why expect to harvest new ideas every single day? I think that’s a really beautiful way to see it.

Speaking of that vacation feeling again. It’s interesting how quickly you adjust to not be using social media because now it’s just like that first day after vacation. I’m like: how do I create a new blog post in WordPress and how do I reply to comments on Instagram? Well, maybe it’s not that bad, but I’m still a little slow today.

I made this cake a couple of weeks ago when you could buy 1 kg of blood oranges for 20 SEK, which is about 2 bucks. I just knew I had to bake something using the oranges and so I decided to make a cake, using them as topping. I used the recipe for my black bean brownies, and only made a few adjustments and used a different baking pan. And it turned out great! You can of course also make a fancy frosting and put on the cake if you prefer. I just topped my cake with fresh oranges and shredded chocolate.

Blood orange cake | v + gf

500 g black beans
2 dl rolled oats
1/2 dl coconut sugar
1/2 dl maple syrup
1/2 dl strong coffee
1 dl cacao
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt
100 g vegan chocolate
4 tbsp unflavored coconut oil + extra for the pan

Topping

Blood oranges
Vegan chocolate (shredded)

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 175°C.
2. Add black beans, oats, coconut sugar, maple syrup, cacao, baking powder, sea salt, and coffee to a blender and mix until you have a smooth batter.
3. Transfer the batter to a baking bowl.
4. Finely chop the chocolate and add it to the cake batter.
5. Melt the coconut oil and it to the batter as well.
6. Brush a springform pan (one where you can separate the bottom from the sides) with melted coconut oil and pour the cake batter into the pan.
7. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 30 minutes or until a test stick comes out almost dry.
8. Let the cake cool down.
9. Place thin slices of blood oranges on top of the cake and finally sprinkle some shredded chocolate over it.
10. Enjoy!