Sandy and I went to see his sister, Heather, last weekend. While we were there she told me about a cook book that might be good for me, despite all my weird food "issues", that did cakes and stuff like that. She showed me the book and I flicked through the pages with a great deal of skepticism; people recommend such books to me or Sandy every so often and more often than not, they are not great, either needing too many specialist ingredients or going over the top with foods to avoid or being dairy (but not gluten free) or vice versa. This book is different though, I flicked through and looked at a few recipes at random, and almost every one was suitable just as it was, or with minimal "fussing". I was so excited that the very next day I went to my local branch of Waterstones and bought myself one. The book is called
Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood and it takes a different look at cake recipes. Instead of using lots of butter or flour, the recipes all use vegetables as their base (for this reason, I recommend to anyone who buys it to actually read the introduction, the author does an amazing job of explaining her philosophy and how to change things if you don't have a particular recipe! Coincidently, most of the recipes are low fat (because they use the vegetables instead of butter for moisture) and many are low sugar (because they use the natural sweetness of the vegetables).
Last week I made a chocolate and pistachio cake, it used courgette as it's base and was absolutely delicious. This week I thought I would make myself some chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes - yum! I thought, as mundane as it seems, I would blog about it, so here are some pictures and thoughts. I'm not going to post the recipe in case Harry Eastwood comes and shouts at me for publishing her recipes but there is still plenty to be said. At various points I got so carried away with cooking I forgot I wanted to blog, so sorry if there are holes in the photo story!
The recipe in question, one great thing about this book are there are loads of pictures which help you get a grasp for the end product.
My cupcake tray doesn't see much use, here it is patiently waiting for me to actually cook something!!
whisking the sugar and eggs (the one "standard" cake ingredient still used in this book, not sure if you happen to be vegan how easy that is to deal with...)
Butternut squash was the base of this recipe
All the ingredients mixed up and ready to go, including the pulverised peanuts
Peanut butter frosting - yum!
Straight out the oven...
The finished article, having been cooled and iced.
Sandy and I can vouch for these also being delicious, this cookbook is already a firm favourite!!
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