It's an odd thing, but despite not having a terribly sweet tooth, I really like baking cakes. And reading about cakes. And drooling over pictures of cakes. So it's not terribly surprising that I bought a cake book.
And I thought I'd try out a very basic recipe first - American Vanilla Cupcakes.
Yes, that is a courgette in the background. Because the book 'Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache' is unusual in that it uses vegetables - courgettes, swede, tunip, beetroot, butternut squash, parsnip, potato - they're all there. So you get cake, but healthy, virtuous cake, without fat. What's not to be excited about?
The food styling is sublime - look here or here to see what I mean and the chapters are organized along colour themes (a la Apples for Jam). And I really like the trust me tips which explain things ( in the case of this recipe, why not to worry that the mixture feels looser than a normal cupcake). Also very interesting were the Cake Diary pages which make it clear quite how many iterations these recipes went through to achieve the end product.
The first nagging doubts came when I licked the bowl. Not nice at all. The rice flour made the mixture unpleasantly gritty and the flavour was not good. But I reserved judgement. They baked beautifully - rising evenly and looked glorious. The great thing about their fat-free-ness is that you don't get any of that seepage of buttery greasyness into your cupcake wrapper.
So I made a batch of the Snow Meringue Icing and soon those cakes were looking even better.
Really, doesn't that just make you want to devour it? So I did, and what a disappointment. The cake was kind of rubbery and tasteless and the icing (which uses icing sugar and egg whites cooked over a bain marie and beaten for 9 mins) wasn't as good as standard seven minuite frosting made with caster sugar.
Now perhaps I just had an off baking day, because all the reviews I've seen of the book have been glowing. And I'm happy to test out a couple more recipes. I might try substituting a proportion of the rice flour specified with plain flour.
But at the back of my head, a little voice is is whispering if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.