Peanut butter chocolate squares (brownies-ish)

I have concluded that each year I find a 'weird' baking type to follow and stick to rather than regular cakes, possibly because it sounds more interesting and challenging, possibly because I associate some sort of health benefit to it. Last year it was the vegetable cakes, and now this year it seems I am becoming interested in raw and vegan baking.

I decided not to buy yet another cookbook, but I had a look at the Post-punk kitchen website, as their recipe books seem to feature very heavily on Amazon while I was researching vegan baking books. There, I came across a recipe for a peanut butter blondie, and just the mention of peanut butter for me means it is love at first sight!

As usual, I did not follow the recipe as written, because what could be better than a peanut butter square, but a peanut butter and chocolate square (mmm, peanut butter and chocolate...). There is something insanely delicious about this combination that works even with slightly disgusting ingredients in things like reeces peanut butter cups.

Anyway, here is my modified recipe:

230 gr crunchy peanut butter (I used Meridian, which is a natural one)
30 gr coconut oil (the original recipe called for rapeseed oil, so I am sure that would work fine too)
100 gr brown sugar (for my non-sweet tooth, add more to make them sweeter)
60 ml almond milk (apparently any non-dairy milk would do here)
150 gr flour
Half tsp baking powder
Half tsp salt
3-4 tsps cacao powder
chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Mix the peanut butter, sugar and coconut oil in a bowl. I didn't bother melting the coconut oil first but it may have made the mixing a little easier.
3. Add the almond milk and mix through
4. Add the dry ingredients and mix until it becomes like a dough. At this point it resembled more of a cookie dough than a brownie mix, and so I mixed it further by hand.
5. Line a small dish with baking paper and spread the mixture as evenly as possibly, using your hands and then a flat spatula to even it out at the top. Try to stop yourself from eating the raw dough.
6. Bake for around 20-25 minutes, until the ends look slightly crisp. The top will have coloured slightly but the inside will still be very soft.
7. Cool on a wire rack and then cut into squares.

Slightly crispy on the top, gooey and soft in the middle

Verdict: really yummy! As noted above, I had to stop myself from eating the raw dough (no eggs for those who are concerned about these things, so bonus).

Some crumbling issues, which I attributed to the lack of eggs, but after reading the comments at the bottom of the original recipe it sounds like the kind of peanut butter used might also have a role - they seem to suggest that a creamy peanut butter like the ones you buy in the supermarket is better at holding these together. If you do make them with a different kind of peanut butter and get no crumbliness, let me know!

Adventures in raw cooking, and a raw lemon-lavender cheesecake

My yoga journey has taken me to another yoga retreat, this time a day retreat (does it really count?) by the lovely Natasha Kerry.

What intrigued me about this one is that it included a raw food lunch followed by a raw food demonstration. When I booked this, I had no idea what raw food meant (other than the obvious of course) and had not dabbled in it at all, unless you count salads and other raw assemblies. I realised later that the healthy chocolate treats I made are actually a raw food and a variation of a raw brownie.

I now know that raw food involves not heating food above around 115 F (around 40 degrees C) so it doesn't have to be cold food. This however means that you can't have any pasta, rice or quinoa (yes, really, no pasta! This is never really going to work!). Although you can use a dehydrator (or apparently attempt this with an oven) to make crackers and other crispy things like kale chips to add a bit more texture. And weirdly, it involves a lot of soaking of nuts that are then blended to make cream fillings or cheese. 

Our lunch was actually surprisingly delicious and filling:

Warmish smoky red pepper soup with kale chips

Salad of rocket and figs stuffed with macadamia nut cheese

Carrot 'pasta' with asparagus and macadamia nut 'blue' cheese

Cheesecake with mango chutney

Although I do not see myself replacing my beloved pasta with carrot ribbons or courgette spirals, I can see the benefit of introducing a few things from the raw diet into mine, in particular the deserts and possibly the cheese (I have just ordered a cloth, let's see if I ever use it now!).

So, in the spirit of raw, I decided to attempt a raw and vegan (I think, apparently honey is not vegan though!) cheesecake that I found on this lovely website. This is a lavender cheesecake with lemon and honey, and thus a great opportunity to use up the 'cooking' lavender that I was gifted over Christmas.

The idea is to use creamed cashews instead of cream cheese and a nut/date mixture for the base instead of the crushed biscuits. I was a bit dubious about the cashews serving as an adequate substitute for cream cheese, but actually, after soaking in warm water for an hour (does that still count as raw?  I don't know!) they could be blitzed to a lovely creamy consistency.

Its not a looker, I agree, but still tasty! Need to get better with the parchment paper placement

The verdict: I think cashew cream flavoured with your chosen cheesecake topping can serve as an excellent substitute for cream cheese and has a really nice consistency. In this particular case, I thought that the lemon was overpowering and I could barely taste the lavender. Now, I will admit that this may be partly my fault, as I got confused with the cup measurements (why can't everyone just use grams??) and just ended up adding what I thought was correct - I should have just done it to taste instead.

The other issue I had is that the base didn't really stick together. I thought that perhaps more dates were necessary to hold the mixture together, and might try and experiment with that next time. It might also again be partially my fault, as I used a mixture of hazelnuts, pecans and ground almonds, and perhaps the ground almonds were a little too fine to hold together.

You can see here where I tried to cut a slice and the base crumbled off

Anyway, this was an interesting experiment, and I am looking forward to trying out more raw/vegan cakes!

Baking gone a bit wrong - honey and peanut butter bars

My friend was coming to stay for a few days, and trying to play good hostess I asked her what she wanted to have for breakfast - given that we are a weird household when it comes to this supposedly important meal and either skip it entirely or just have cereal bars. So I bought a big box of porridge oats for her, but then was left with a dilemma: what to do with the remainder? Well, I'd been meaning to make the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's honey and peanut butter bars, and now was my chance.

Stuck at home on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I decided to give them a go. Of course any normal person would read the recipe, go to the shop and buy the ingredients etc etc. But not me, in the spirit of experimentation I decided that, even though I didn't have enough of most of the things needed to make these bars, I would press on.

Not enough butter? No problem, instead of 125 grams I just used the 50 grams that I had, thinking I could supplement with peanut butter. But no, not enough peanut butter either, so I just chucked in the pan 140 grams, desperately trying to scrape as much as possible out of the jar. No oranges? Just try and zest an already zested orange to get a teency bit of zest out, supplementing instead with the juice of said orange and the zest of two lemons instead of one. And who weighs honey? Its a pain to even get off the spoon in the first place, let alone getting it off the spoon, onto the scales, off the scales and into the pan (some hindsight googling reveals that one tablespoon, which is what I used, is about 15 grams, so again, way off the 45 grams the recipe calls for). Oh yeah, and the the mixture didn'y quite fit the dish, so I left a gap. What could be the harm.

Well, they didn't quite work. They taste nice (and actually sweet enough, so not sure about the sugar and honey quantities) but the consistency is  different to the ones I had tried before, I assume because of the reduced fat content and reduced amount of honey. And of course, in the spirit of totally ignoring the recipe, I cut them too soon so they crumbled a bit more than they should have. But I guess not bad for such a deviation from the original!

So the moral of the story is, don't stay in on a sunny day and stick to the recipe.

Edit: I am assured that they don't taste like they went wrong, so maybe not such a disaster after all. 

Chocolate orange cupcakes

I have been experimenting with the lovely "Red velvet chocolate heartache" book for a few weeks now, with the cinnamon-banana loaf (in cupcake format) being a firm favourite. So at this point I decided I was brave enough to adapt one of the recipes extensively and create something of my own (and thus for which I can post the recipe here, yay!).

Chocolate and orange cupcakes (makes 12)

3 eggs
180 grams light  muscovado sugar
200 grams butternut squash
100 grams ground almonds
100 grams plain flour
60 grams cocoa powder
zest and juice of one  orange
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (fan oven)
2. Grate the butternut squash very finely
3. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar for about 5 minutes
4. Add the butternut squash and mix until incorporated
5. Add the ground almonds, flour, cocoa, zest and orange juice, baking powder and salt, and mix for another 1-2 minutes
6. Using a tablespoon, add the mixture into cupcake cases within a tray - I have a silicone one so that can be used without the cases, which is handy.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the tray on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Carefully take the cupcakes out of the tray and allow to cool completely on the wire rack.

I am not a fan of frosting, as mentioned before, and I think these are really good on their own. However, I understand I am a bit weird in this respect, so if you are a fan of frosting just use your favourite recipe to garnish these.

Chocolate orange cupcakes in the front, cinnamon-banana-pecan ones in the back

Harry Eastwood's orange squash cupcakes

Blog, you have not been ignored, I have just been away for a few weeks, having an amazing time in Peru (a knitting-related post regarding Peru will follow at some point). So instead of waiting to start my next knitting project, I thought I would blog about this amazing cake baking book I have discovered.

As you know, I have been in search for a way to still do my baking every week but not end up massive from eating too much cake. I can't remember how but I stumbled upon a book on Amazon entitled "Red velvet chocolate heartache" by Harry Eastwood, in which the cakes include finely grated vegetables and nuts instead of butter. It seems a bit crazy, but the reviews were so good that I got pretty tempted. I had a look to see if any of the recipes were available online, and then tried the chocolate peanut cupcakes (which are make with butternut squash instead of butter) to test it. Note that I don't normally  like cupcakes because I don't like icing (too sweet for me), but I decided that I could just make cupcakes without the icing, similar to tiny little cakes (and I guess easier to eat). I was pretty impressed with the results, the cakes were moist and chocolatey, albeit under-sweet but that was my fault for using less sugar.

So I took the plunge and bought the book. I have since made the banana cinnamon loaf in cupcake format, and they were absolutely delicious, probably the best banana cake I have ever made (I couldn't actually limit myself to one per day, ended up having two!). And today I baked the orange squash cupcakes, which again are made with butternut squash instead of butter, as well as ground almonds for a bit more moisture. The interesting aspect today was the I stuck to the recipe and used rice flour instead of regular flour, as suggested. If I am entirely honest, I am not sold on rice flour, the author says that it offers "a lightness of touch", which is true, but for some reason I am convinced it has a bit of an after-taste. But possibly that's just me. It can definitely be replaced with regulate flour, so I might alternate between in the two in the future.

Un-iced, but glinting from the sugar and orange juice I poured on top

So my verdict so far is, buy this book! It might be a bit more effort to finely grate the veg (especially butternut squash is a bit of a pain), but the cakes are beautiful and it always seems like a bit of an adventure, as I have absolutely no idea how they will turn out!

Whole orange chocolate cake

I finally got round to making this no butter, no flour whole orange cake. The idea is basically boiling an orange pretty much to death, and this, together with the ground almonds (which substitute the flour), provide the moisture to the cake. The 6 eggs (!) possibly have something to do with this too. 

This is apparently a Nigella recipe from her book Feast. As it has been published in about a billion places online already I don't feel so bad about posting parts of the recipe here (as an FYI I got it from here).

You will need:

1 large orange

6 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 gr ground almonds
250 gr caster sugar
50 gr cocoa


First you boil the orange for about 2 hours. I'd suggest putting a lid on the pan as the whole kitchen filled with steam and stained our ceiling. Then drain the orange and blend it. I actually did this 2 days in advance and stored it in the fridge.

Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix them (I used an electric hand mixer) until you get a good cake mix consistency. The mix makes more than what you can fit in one loaf tin, so I had to pour some of it in a second tin - I guess about 2/3 of recipe makes enough for a regular loaf tin. Then bake at 180 degrees C. The recipe says to bake for an hour - I took my small cake out after  30 min and the big one after 45 minutes because it had started to burn. Perhaps the 180 degrees is for a non-fan oven?

The one in the front is the mini one (ie thin one) and the one in the back is the proper one, which caught a bit on the top

The cake was absolutely delicious, it is very light (probably because of the absence of butter) and very juicy from the fruit. I liked it so much I am having trouble not eating the whole thing in one sitting! 

Granola chocolate chip cookies

I had planned to go for another low-fat recipe for this week's bake. However, I was a little short of time for a cake - some friends were coming over to our neighbourhood for lunch and I wanted to quickly prepare something in case we decided to come back to ours for coffee (you should always have something at home to give to guests, rights?). I was tempted to go for the peanut butter choc chip cookies from the Primrose bakery cookbook because I have made them before and they are truly yummy, but in the spirit of being adventurous I decided to try the granola white choc chip cookies instead (from the same book).

I have wanted to try these for a while, but granola is not cheap, and somehow it felt like a bit of a waste to use it for cookies. The book suggests making your own and includes a recipe for this, but I still haven't gotten round to that (will certainly write about it if I do anyway). So I bought probably one of the cheapest boxes of granola I could find that still looked pretty tasty (in case I wanted to eat it for breakfast) and came in one of my favourite flavours - apple and cinnamon. I really dislike white chocolate (its not chocolate, its sugar!) so instead I used some regular chocolate chips, but not that many so as to not overpower the granola flavours. The recipe also calls for almonds, which I did not include.

(I quick clearly need to start taking better pictures!). 

Ok they do look a bit wonky, but I was in a rush so I basically just dumped a spoonful of dough on the baking sheet rather than make nice symmetrical cookie balls. They also look a bit paler than I expected - I contemplated leaving them in for longer than the recommended 10 minutes, but then you run the risk of them drying up.

Verdict: I thought they were pretty tasty and the right level of chewiness, with a good crunch  and a nice cinnamon-y flavour from the granola. Next time I would probably either opt for a plainer granola and add more choc chips (or maybe just oats, that's a classic too although you lose the crunch ), or omit the choc chips and use a tasty granola like this one. 

PS. I debating whether it was ok to post my 'adapted' recipe here. I read through some articles about the rules of copyright and recipe re-posting.  Although technically what I made is sufficiently different from the recipe in the book, I feel that it is a bit wrong to republish something that is not freely available without permission (my line of work has probably instilled some copyright guilt in me...). At least for now anyway.

Low-fat cake?

That's absurd, right!? I have been trying to bake something every week in an effort to get better at it, but this does not work well with the post-holiday, post-diet weight gain. While on a diet last year I stumbled upon a recipe for a cake with no butter, just yoghurt, so I thought I would give it another go.
I based it on this recipe  for orange and yoghurt cake, but I decided to try lemon and poppy seed instead.

I used:
170g total 0% greek yoghurt (ie one small tin)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I think that's 30ml?)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (although in hindsight 2 lemons would have been better).
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
Poppy seeds (didn't measure, just stirred in until the distribution looked right).

Then followed the instructions as per the recipe above (ie whip eggs, yoghurt, oil, lemon zest, then add dry ingredients and mix some more before adding the poppy seeds and lemon juice). One thing that always annoys me with cake recipes is if the instructions don't specify fan on non-fan over. In this case I assumed it meant non-fan so baked at 160 degrees for 45 min, and then I think another 10 minutes until the tester came out dry. Pressumably the extra baking time was because the recipe did mean fan oven... I may have been better off taking it out a little earlier too.

Anyway, apart from a slight overwhipping of the eggs it turned out good, and as you can see we already ate half of it! So I guess it is possible to make a slightly low fat cake that tastes good