Peapods

New Site New Site New Site!

2009-08-19T19:34:29+01:00

Hurrah! I have moved to a new site :)

Come and take a look

Babycakes gluten free Chocolate Cupcakes and Pumpkin Spice Muffins

2009-08-16T22:33:49+01:00

I have missed posting on here the past few days, as I mentioned before I am being strict with myself to get my new site finished. It is almost done! I can't wait to show everyone, I just need to do the last few tweaks :) I have a backlog of interesting things I want to show.

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Here in the meantime is a cookery experiment I tried today..

As I have mentioned on Twitter, I recently bought the Babycakes cookery book which contains recipes from the NYC bakery of the same name. The recipes are vegan, mostly gluten free, and mostly sugar free. I am not allergic to gluten but as half my family are I like to try out gluten free recipes so that at family get-togethers we can all eat the same thing. For a family 'do' this weekend I gave the Chocolate Cupcakes and the Pumpkin Spice Muffins a try.

Some notes on the ingredients:

Most gluten-free chefs will probably be familiar with potato starch, arrowroot, and xanthan gum, these are not too hard to find in the local wholefoods and bigger supermarkets will have them too.
Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour that is used throughout the book isn't stocked in the UK that I could find so I substituted Doves Farm Gluten Free Plain Flour.
I could not find Garbanzo-fava bean flour or anything similar anywhere in shops or online in the UK so I substituted rice flour as recommended on the Babycakes site. I used brown rice flour.
I found coconut oil in a large South Asian shop. I melted this gently before using, it turns to liquid anyway in a hot kitchen. The agave nectar was not hard to find, I got this in the local wholefoods.
I made my own apple sauce for the cupcakes, bought stuff would taste the same I am sure but I couldn't find any that didn't have citrus (another allergy!).
Something to note is that in the book it refers to 'baking powder' but make sure this is gluten free baking powder. You should be able to find this in a whole foods store too.

This might seem all a bit of a mission :) however gluten free cooking is like a science experiment and it is worth getting the right ingredients. Anyway once you have the ingredients in your cupboards it is then easy peasy to whip up a batch of whatever GF item you want.

The icing in the book is vegan and uses soy milk and soy milk powder but.... yes... soy is another allergy in my family. So for the icing I scrapped the vegan element (no one is a vegan anyway) and I topped the Chocolate Cupcakes with a small spoonful of whipped cream, a thick smudge of chocolate ganache (melt dark chocolate with cream and a small dot of unsalted butter, cool until spreadable), and a dusting of cocoa powder. To go on the Pumpkin Spice Muffins I mixed cream with a little nutmeg, ginger, and unrefined confectioners sugar. I chilled both the topping until spreading them on just before serving.

The results:

The verdict:

Thumbs up all round. All were agreed that you would not know that the cake part (not the icing) was gluten free, sugar free, and vegan. Without the sugar you don't get the swoop and crash of blood sugar or cravings which is great.

The vote was pretty evenly split between the Pumpkin Spice Muffins and the Chocolate Cupcakes. They were both fudgy and moist. I myself liked the Pumpkin Spice the best but the Chocolate Cupcakes were good for a special occasion. I don't see any real reason why the cake mixture would not work spread out in a cake tin if you wanted to have one whole cake. Note that the cakes do not rise very much so do fill up the cake papers almost to the top.

My final thoughts are that this book is fairly specialised, if you are a gluten free person yourself the spelt recipes would not be suitable (although I read somewhere that you could substitute in a GF flour), however if you have an interest in GF cooking or simply want healthier cakes then this book is helpful. I will definitely be making more things from this book. The recipes worked well and tasted good.

Totoro fan

2009-08-10T23:12:29+01:00

Despite all the fun things that are going on at the moment I am being a little bit quiet on here on purpose as I am not allowing myself to get distracted from finishing building a new site :) I will be back properly very soon!

I am just popping in to show something nice that I was given the other day. This Totoro fan was a recent gift from my dad from Japan. My Neighbour Totoro came out in the late 80s and was one of the favourite films of my sister and I when we were young. Looking at it now I think we really identified with the two sisters in the film. (I am the big sister.) Natsukashi!

Did you know that there are two versions of English language dubbing of the film? I like the old early 90s one best but that might just be because of nostaligic reasons :)

wool ring

2009-08-04T21:31:55+01:00

My sister made it for my mother. Pretty crazy but cool huh! I want one :)

through the lens

2009-08-03T22:31:20+01:00

I was at a friend's house and he had some zoom lenses. I noticed that I could focus through them at either end to make little upside down intense pictures. That's all. Just something random :)

THE chocolate chip cookies

2009-08-03T20:14:42+01:00

Last week for my work colleagues I made up a batch of THE New York Times cookies that so many people were making last year. Having been on a baking hiatus because of the lack of oven it is only now that I have had a chance to make them. However they just did not come out right. I blame the fact that it was about midnight that I was making up the dough (it has to refrigerate 24hrs) and I had some confusion translating cups and ounces to grams (why does it say 8 1/2 ounces not 4 ounces?). My late night math is not great. Even though I don't make many biscuits but it was clear that they were the wrong density. As an emergency measure I made these River Cottage cookies from The River Cottage Family Cookbook. They were nice but not irresistible. So I was glad over the weekend to get the chance to try the NYT recipe again. The cookies came out great and vanished quickly.

as it is

2009-08-01T12:30:41+01:00

Sometimes it is worth having something as it is, no mucking about. Just a little bit of salt and pepper.

poor mouse

2009-07-30T17:06:59+01:00

Poor mouse, laying so quietly...

WHAM!!

Stomp stomp.

Some minutes later.....

Poor mouse laying so quiet, so abandoned, so upside down...

ATTACK!!!!

"What?"

picking chamomile

2009-07-29T20:35:27+01:00

I have been out picking chamomile in the rain. Growing chamomile was a bit of a luxury 'just for me' thing to grow, I really like nice chamomile tea. However it looks really pretty too :) I actually planted this last year but it is only this year that it has come up with the chamomile flowers for me to harvest. I bought the seeds from here.

ivy

2009-07-28T19:57:38+01:00

alice