RECIPE: Healthy peanut butter honey dip with fruit.

I know what you've probably been thinking over the past few weeks: 'Where have Rachel's baking recipes gone?!' I know, I know. Sorry. I imagine it's been weighing heavily on your minds, so for that, I must apologise. Hopefully you haven't lost too much sleep over this.

It's not that I haven't been eating cake - HELL NO - but rather that I've been so busy what with moving to a new country, starting a new job and settling into a new life that I haven't quite had time to try my hand at whipping up something of the cakey variety myself. Yet.

But don't worry, plenty of yummy German goodness has been occurring in my life, largely thanks to the AMAZING bakery round the corner from my flat.

I'm lucky in that the girls I'm living with have a kitchen brimming with baking utensils, tins and ingredients (many of my fellow year-abroader friends don't even have ovens!), and once I figure it all out, cake will most definitely be a-go-go.

The thing is, Germans don't bake in the way I'm used to - I noticed this while perusing the baking aisle in many-a-supermarket, as one does for an afternoon activity. It's going to be a challenge trying to convert British recipes to unfamiliar German ingredients, but of course, I'll keep y'all updated with how I get on. Phew, I know. You can sleep easy tonight.

But where am I going with this? You clicked this link to see some peanut buttery honey goodness didn't you? Hold tight, dear friends, I'm getting there. Slowly.

Today I had a reeeaaaal baking craving. 'I'm sick. *cough*' (Name the film - answers in the comments please!) and I thought some soothing baking therapy might just sort me out. But alas, I have no eggs, and EVERYTHING in Germany is closed on Sunday. So unfortunately neither cake nor baking could materialise.

Instead, I decided to concoct something just as delicious and comforting, but far better for me. I give you (after the biggest build-up of all time), peanut butter honey dip with fruit.

And it was goooooood. Thick and creamy and sweet and just a little salty. Ooh yeah. I ate mine curled up on bed 'watching' German TV.

The peanut butter is such an energy-booster, which is great for when you're feeling a bit lethargic, and the sweetness of the honey gave me the sugar rush I needed this afternoon. By using Philly, it's nice and light too.

I call it healthy, and obviously compared to eating just fruit it's the more calorific option, but a girl can't get through the afternoon-slump on fruit alone, and this is better than eating a big ole slab of cake like I so often do. Oops.

Everyone knows that when you're ill you've got to keep your fruit and veg up, so I devoured mine with a load of crunchy green grapes. I think this would also be fab with slices of apple or banana chunks too though.

I'm not sure if you can get it in the UK, but I used Honey Philly as well as extra honey, but if you can't find the former, just use regular cream cheese and add a smidge more honey, depending on how sweet you like things.

I think next time I make this, I'm going to try swapping my beloved PB for my equally beloved Nutella. Imagine that with strawberries. Yeah. Ya feel me.

To be fair, this doesn't really warrant much of a recipe, it's just mixing stuff together. But it was so yummy I felt the need to share it with you. This serves one person. One relatively hungry person, that is. So here goes:

Ingredients:

1 tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 tbsp cream cheese (either plain or honey-flavoured if you have it)
1 tbsp runny honey (to taste)
a splash of milk (optional)
as much chopped fruit as you like


Method:

1. Spoon the peanut butter, cream cheese and honey into a bowl.

2. Swirl them together until well-mixed. This is quite fun. Or maybe I'm just lame.

3. If it's thicker than you'd like, stir in a splash of milk until you reach your desired consistency.

4. Serve with the fruit. YUM!