Hazelnut Maple Cookies

It is almost two years ago that I started this blog and shared the first recipe with you. I started the blog because I needed somewhere to talk about food where I would not annoy the heck out of Michael. According to him, there are many things to talk about that are a lot more interesting than what to cook for dinner, and lunch the next day, and what cookies to make inbetween.
I can totally understand that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for thinking about cooking and talking about it, too.
What I did not anticipate back then was the joy I would get from playing with the design of this site. If you don't just read this in Google Reader, as I do with many blogs, you may have noticed that I have changed quite a few things over those two years, and you have my latest redesign before you right now. (That would be the time to come on over from Google Reader to check it out). If you visited the blog in the last few days, and on certain days during those two years that I worked on the design, you might have noticed a too large header sticking out into the blog posts, buttons in strange places or just generally parts of the blog missing.

Let's just say I haven't figured out how to do those things smoothly. I have long stopped worrying when that happens and learnt to use Photoshop quickly to fix things that went wrong.
I hope you like the new design, and I guess now that I made everything to my liking, it will actually stay this way for a long time. (no more misplaced headers in the future, yay!)
To celebrate, I made cookies for you and me. Nutty non-bake cookies that are really quickly mixed together in a food processor, rolled into balls, flattened, frozen and then enjoyed with a warm cup of tea. And I tell myself that since they are vegan and glutenfree, and only require a little maple syrup instead of sugar, they are healthy-ish.

Coconut Pineapple Swirl Crumbcake

Can we talk kitchen failures?
Just last week I wanted to bring a cake to a get together with friends. I was a bit short on time, but everything went well and I baked the cake, removed it from the oven, let it cool down for a few minutes and then put it in a bag and took it with me. And somehow, the cake liquified on the way to my friend. The tester that I inserted came out clean, but when I tried to cut it into slices, the center pour out like in a molten chocolate cake. Exept, it wasnt. We ate some of the crust and had to throw the rest away. And I still don't know why and how on earth this happend. Any ideas?

What is the last thing that went wrong in your kitchen? Please share your stories with me.

But this weeks cake turned out like I imagined it to be. I adapted a recipe I found on the Post Punk Kitchen, Raspberry Jam Swirl Crumbcake. I brought pineapple jam home from my holidays in Spain, and wanted to used it in this cake. I added some coconut to it, made it non-vegan (oops, always happens to me) with the addition of butter in the crumbs, and oh they are good. They are not too sweet, the top is crumbly and crunchy and the tropical flavour just make me feel relaxed, like during a holiday. And they were really easy to make, too. No failures here.