on healthy cake

A couple of years ago I stumbed upon a baking book entitled, 'Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache.' I adored the sound of this book, and had a quick flick through to discover pages filled with beautifully styled photography. In all honesty, I didn't take in what the focus of the recipe book was. I saw cakes + photos and that was enough. I managed to exercise a little restraint, and waited until my birthday, when I received the lovely book as a gift. It was only then that I discovered that all of the recipes for the cakes contained vegetables. Aside from carrot cake, this was a new concept to me.What's more, butter is a rare sight in Harry Eastwood's baking recipes. Again, another new concept.

I have now baked a number of the recipes from this book (including our wedding cake) and I have to admit, that every time I gather my ingredients & start combining them, I can't help but think to myself, 'what, no butter? How is this going to work? This doesn't feel right. Wow, look at all those vegetables. Is this going to taste like cake?' And, quite wonderfully, they always do taste like cake.

On Saturday I made Ginger Millies. They are meant to be tiny bitesize cakes, baked in petit four cases, but I have donated all of my pretty cupcake cases to the Graphics area of my classroom, so had no option but to bake big cupcake versions of them. Here's the recipe, loosely adapted.


Ginger Millies {gluten free}
ingredients
200g butternut squash
100g ground almonds
50g rice flour
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
4 tsp ginger
100g caster sugar
zest of a lemon

for the icing
125g icing sugar
3 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp water

method
1) Beat together the eggs & sugar for approx. 5 mins until light and frothy
2) Meanwhile, peel & finely grate the butternut squash
3) Stir in the grated squash, rice flour & ground almonds & mix
4) Add ginger & baking powder
5) Add the lemon zest & gently stir together
6) Distribute between the cupcake cases as you see fit (approx. 2/3 full)
7) Bake in preheated oven for 25mins
8) Leave to cool, then decorate with the icing.

Thoughts: These cakes had far more lemon about them than ginger. I did adapt the original recipe & added extra lemon juice to the icing instead of water, which might have made the difference, but I really didn't taste the ginger in them. 

Comments

  1. Butternut squash! That's crazy! Wow, I think I may have to give that a try. Hope all is well your end and 2012 is treating you well my dear x

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