Hidden vegetables!

Home on a Friday means baking something for the weekend and maybe give a new recipe a try, well it'd be rude not to, right?

So, as peaches are in season mixed with the fact I'd been watching a food programme which used sweet potato in a candy I thought I'd search for a recipe to use both these ingredients. Yes, I found one! 

A lovely friend lent me a cookery book, (like a hundred years ago and I've yet to give it back), which contains recipes for just such an occasion and hooray instructions to make Peach and Poppy Seed muffins was contained within! 

They were really simple to make and the finished result was really tasty, see below, I dare you not to salivate or dribble while looking at the picture! Oh and their gluten free too! (You're welcome!)

 

Now for the recipe....

Peach and Poppy Seed Muffins

(Taken from "Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache" by Harry Eastwood.)

Makes 9

2 free range eggs

120g caster sugar

200g peeled and finely grated sweet potato

100g white rice flour 

100g ground almonds

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

2 teaspoons baking powder

Half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Quarter teaspoon salt

3 small peaches cut into half centimetre cubes

You will also need 

12 hole muffin tray 

9 muffin cases

1. Preheat oven to 180c / 350f / gas mark 4 and line the muffin tray with the cases.

2. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy (this takes about 3 minutes).

3. Beat in (using a wooden spoon) the sweet potato, flour, ground almonds, poppy seeds, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt until well mixed, don't over mix.

4. Fold in the cubes of peach, do this gently, don't over mix.

5. Fill the muffin cases right up to the top.

6. Bake for about 30 minutes.

7. Remove from oven onto a wire rack to cool.

Notes! 

I didn't have any rice flour so I used plain flour, obviously this makes them non gluten free but the use of plain flour didn't seem to affect the results.

I used a wooden spoon as instructed to mix in all the ingredients and then switched to a large metal spoon to fold in the peach pieces as this type of spoon cut through the mixture better.

I only had a 6 hole muffin tray so I used that, baked 6, left the rest of the mixture in the bowl then baked the remaining 3 while the 6 were cooling. 

Good warm or cold. I'm pretty sure warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream would make a yummy dessert! Note to self....try this! 

GD*BG

Zebra cake.

Yeah you did read that correctly! Don't panic though, it doesn't contain Zebras!!

In the hiatus between the awesome Olympics tv coverage finishing in the UK (the whole country seems to be in a sort of sporting limbo!) and the Paralympics starting, the foodie programmes have begun; a sure sign autumn is approaching!

One of the new generation of tv chefs is the gorgeous Lorraine Pascale, her new series (her second I believe) started last week and in the first episode was her "Crouching Tiger Hidden Zebra Cake" here's a link to the recipe. Of course I'm always up for a baking challenge and so was super excited to see this one on the show.

The recipe is enough to make two round 20cm diameter cakes. I a) don't have two 20cm cake tins and b) only really wanted to make one cake as if it turned into a disaster I hadn't wasted too many ingredients or too much money. So I figured...I'll just halve all the ingredients thus making enough for just one cake. Then I got paranoid that maybe that's not what you're supposed to do.... I know I'll Tweet Lorraine herself and ask - I never expected to get a reply but at least I'd have tried to find out if halving the quantities was ok. Holy cake batter I got a reply! She said "unfortunately not really....:(" What? Why? Oh what the heck, I'm too excited at the prospect of making a stripy cake....I'm doing it anyway.

Turns out it was fine!

This is the batter in the tin ready to go in the oven. I didn't think to take pics to blog this until I got to this point, sort of convinced that because Lorraine had said it wouldn't work, well, it wouldn't. But once I got to this stage and it almost looked right I decided it may just work!

The batter.

Then there's always that moment that you dare to look in the oven (or is that just me?) when it's baking....just to check it's working! It was..see:

 The oven 

Cooked and out of the oven to cool...still looks ok!

 I don't normally cut my cakes completely in half buy it was the only way to see if it had worked. 

Not bad for a first attempt I'd say.

It went down very well with a cup of tea, sat in the parents garden, in the sunshine. 

One thing not mentioned on the recipe, but Lorraine did on the tv, is that she put the batter mixes in piping bags (instead of using spoonfuls as the recipe states) and piped big dots one on top of the other. So I did that too.  (I was ambidextrous piping - don't ask - it was messy!) That's why my mix in the tin looks a bit swirly, it's amazing how much the "centre dot" moves around the tin as you pipe one onto the next. When I have another attempt at this, oh yes there will definitely be another! I will try and keep it more central so the stripes in the cake are more defined.

"The Great British Bake Off" is this evening foodie tv viewing choice, then "The Hairy Dieters" I do love a good foodie programme!

If you give this zebra cake a go, please post a comment on here and let me know how you get on.

Happy baking!

GD*BG