Whoopie Pies (makes 10)

Whoopie Pies by The Fat Foodie

A while ago I made chocolate bundt cakes to celebrate my 100th blog post and the sponge I made them with was so tasty that I wanted to try making other things with it. I’ve always loved whoopie pies, but sometimes shop-bought whoopie pies can be a bit too sickly because they have too much filling inside them and the quality of the buttercream icing often leaves a lot to be desired. The beauty of baking your own therefore, is that you can control the buttercream icing to baked sponge ratio to suit your own taste.

Although I used a proper whoopie pie tin it’s not completely necessary because you could just use a yorkshire pudding tin or something like it to bake your whoopie pies in. All you’re looking for is something that’ll control the spread of the sponge as it bakes and allow it to rise. In fact, if you don’t mind your whoopies looking a little odd you could even use a traditional fairycake shallow tin to bake them in.

I made my whoopie pies traditional chocolate ones, but you could omit the cocoa powder and make them with other flavours instead, such as vanilla (using 1 tsp vanilla extract), lemon (using the zest of 1 lemon) or bake them as a plain sponge but sandwich them with strawberry jam as well as buttercream icing.

I can highly recommend making the chocolate whoopie pies though because they result in two rich, moist chocolate sponges that are bonded together with a lightly whipped decadent cocoa buttercream, creating the perfect cake for one. One whoopie pie is a low FODMAP portion, but stopping at only eating one is a different matter entirely though.

Ingredients:

220g dark brown sugar
120g fine polenta
50g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)
90g ground almonds
50g cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
120g butter (or dairy-free version)
100g coconut oil (melted)
4 eggs
60ml rice milk
For the buttercream:
150g butter (or dairy-free version)
170g icing sugar
30g cocoa
1 tbsp rice milk

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F/Gas mark 4.

Lay out your whoopie pie tins and give them a light greasing before dusting them with flour.

Measure all of the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Measure all of the dry ingredients into another bowl and give it a stir.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well.

Pour equal amounts of the cake mix into the whoopie pie tins.

Bake in the oven for around 10-12 mins. (They’re cooked if a skewer pushed into the middle of a couple of the cakes comes out entirely clean.)

Leave to cool on a cooling rack before taking the whoopie pies out of the tin.

Place your buttercream ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk together.

Once cool, sandwich the whoopie pies with the buttercream icing.

Whoopie Pies by The Fat Foodie

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Chocolate Bundt Cakes (makes 12)

Chocolate Bundt Cakes by The Fat Foodie

The 13th of May was the 1 year anniversary of my blog and today is my 100th blog post, so I thought I’d follow in the footsteps of The Great British Bake Off and bake a ‘Showstopper’ to mark the occasion. I originally started my blog (which turned into The Fat Foodie website) as a way to showcase my writing skills in order to try to get a particular job that I really wanted at the time. Sadly, I wasn’t successful in getting the job and although as a result, I did think about calling it a day with the blog (I think at that point there was only a couple of months worth of blog posts on it), I’m really pleased I didn’t.

My website has become an extremely enjoyable activity for me. This might sound odd, but prior to starting the blog I never thought in a million years that I would have my own website. I wasn’t (and still am not) a ‘computery’ ‘techie’ type of person, so to find myself regularly contributing to the internet still thrills me every Sunday and Wednesday morning when I boost my blog posts through my social media channels.

I guess the experience of starting and maintaining my own website has taught me that we shouldn’t hold on to a rigid view of our own sense of who we think are because we can change over time to become something other than what we believe to be true. We can adapt and develop skills that we never knew existed within us and this can help us to contribute to the world in ways that we never considered possible before. That’s what my website has done for me.

So all I’ve got left to say is thanks very much for visiting my website and reading my posts. I hope to continue for a good while yet! Now on to the showstopper!

The other day I was in Lidl and a box of six silicone bundt cases caught my eye, particularly because they were only £1.99. Silicone baking cases are renowned for being pricey so I didn’t hesitate to pick up two boxes. I’ve been mulling over what I was going to bake in them for a while now, but I eventually decided to go with chocolate bundt cakes because I don’t think you can beat a decent chocolate cake in terms of both visual impact and taste.

These chocolate bundt cakes have a hefty whack of good quality dark chocolate in them due to the inclusion of cocoa powder and the dark chocolate drizzled over them. These two forms of pure dark chocolate are further enhanced by the dark brown sugar, which creates a deep, fudgy flavour. In terms of difficulty, these chocolate bundt cakes are really simple to make, involving nothing more taxing than measuring out your wet and dry ingredients into separate bowls and then just blending them together to create your cake mix.

Other than the beautiful taste of the chocolate sponge, I think the real impact of these cakes comes from whatever you decide to bake them in, such as the silicone bundt cases, but you could just as easily use plain old cupcake cases. You certainly don’t need to dust them with edible gold glitter either. It’s just I’ve got the stunning visual impact of my website to take into consideration, you know?  😉

Ingredients:

220g dark brown sugar
120g fine polenta (aka cornmeal)
50g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)
90g ground almonds
80g cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
120g butter (or a dairy-free version)
100g coconut oil (melted)
4 eggs
60ml rice milk
100g dark chocolate (for decoration)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F/Gas mark 4.

Lay out your silicone bundt cases or cupcake cases onto a flat baking tray.

Measure all of the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Measure all of the dry ingredients into another bowl.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well.

Pour equal amounts of the cake mix into the silicone bundt cases and lay them on the baking tray.

Tap them firmly on a work surface a few times (to help prevent bubbles in the base of the bundts) and bake in the oven for around 25 mins. (They’re cooked if a skewer pushed into the middle of a couple of the cakes comes out entirely clean.)

Leave to cool on a cooling rack before taking the bundts out of their cases.

Once cool, melt the dark chocolate in the microwave and drizzle it over the chocolate bundt cakes.

Feel free to dust the bundts with completely unnecessary edible gold glitter if you like.

Chocolate Bundt Cakes by The Fat Foodie

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Sweet Potato Brownies (makes 8)

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

My friend Jen, is a doula (who is, in her words, a person who “provides physical, emotional and informational support to families helping them to reduce fear, pain and uncertainty during their birth experience“). Jen runs her own doula business, Your Birth Scotland, and she recently asked me if I’d develop a few low FODMAP recipes that were quick to cook and healthy for women who are either pregnant or have recently given birth and I accepted her challenge.

These sweet potato brownies were created because I was looking to create a recipe for a snack that would contain a decent amount of nutrients and fibre for mums who had recently given birth. Now I’m not going to lie, they didn’t turn out quite as healthy as I’d envisioned because they have quite a bit of sugar in them. However, on the plus side, they ended up being literally the best brownies I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

Sweet potatoes are a really healthy vegetable and, unlike normal white potatoes, they count towards our five-a-day quota because they have lower starch levels than other carbohydrates. They also contain four main micronutrients: vitamin C, which keeps our immune system healthy and aids iron absorption within the body (very important for both pregnant women and women who have recently given birth); thiamin, an essential B-vitamin which supports the nervous system and ensures good heart health; potassium, which normalises blood pressure and along with thiamin takes care of the nervous system; and manganese, which ensures healthy bones and general cell health. I think it’s fairly clear that they’re nutritional powerhouses within the vegetable world!

These sweet potato brownies also contain other ingredients which are high in nutritional density, such as walnuts which are an excellent source of antioxidants as well as omega-3 fat, an anti-inflammatory fatty acid that the body and mind needs to function properly. The brownies also contain chia seeds, a high protein seed which along with providing the body with fibre, also contains omega-3s and a whole host of micronutrients, such as calcium and magnesium, all of which support overall health. The brownies have also got coconut oil in them, a source of healthy fat which helps to remove bad fat from the blood and lower cholesterol and therefore, promotes heart health and lowers the risk of heart disease.

Lastly, the brownies have a healthy whack of antioxidant-rich cocoa and dark chocolate in them, which contain minerals like potassium, iron, zinc and selenium, and has been found in a Finnish study to lower stress in pregnant women while also producing babies who smiled more in comparison with babies born to non-chocolate eating mothers. Dark chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, a chemical which encourages the release of feel-good endorphins.

After I baked the brownies and let them cool slightly I started to take my photographs and once that was done I figured it was time to have a taste. And wow! Without overly blowing my own trumpet (but I will because they were outstanding) I was blown away by how good they were. I’m not a fan of most brownies because I hate that undercooked texture of the cake mix that so many of them have, but these didn’t have that. They retained the fudgy element of a brownie that you’d expect, but weren’t thick and claggy. Quite surprising considering they contain sweet potato!

Another bonus to these sweet potato brownies is that they are vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free and you cannot tell at all. The cake base is light, but fudgy, and is speckled with little chunks of walnut and their overall chocolate quota is further enhanced by the addition of dark chocolate chips lying atop the brownies. Sigh… They’re just out of this world!

I’d recently treated myself to a little pack of mini loaf baking boxes and they were perfect for baking the brownies in because they helped them to retain their shape and worked perfectly as individual bakes (as opposed to having to cut them out of a tray). This also meant that they were ideal for slotting into my packed lunch box to take to work.

This sweet potato brownie recipe has most definitely become my new go-to brownie recipe and although they may not be the healthiest pregnancy or postpartum snack, doesn’t every new Mum deserve a little treat once in a while for all her hard work? I certainly know that Jen the doula would think so.

Ingredients:

420g peeled raw sweet potato cut into small cubes (or around 250g cooked weight)

140g sugar

100g gluten-free self-raising flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

50g cocoa powder

100g walnuts (keep 16 walnut halves aside to decorate the brownies)

100g dark chocolate chips

2 chia eggs made from 2 tbsps. of chia seeds mixed with 6 tbsps. of cold water and left for half an hour before using (or 2 eggs, if non-vegan)

1 tsp. baking powder

100g melted coconut oil (or butter)

1 tsp vanilla extract

7 tbsps. of rice milk (or standard milk, if non-vegan)

Method:

Make the chia seed eggs, if using.

Preheat your oven to 190C/170C Fan/375F/Gas mark 5.

Lay out your mini loaf baking boxes on a baking tray.

Peel your sweet potato and cut into small cubes (about 2cm square). Place in a bowl and cook on high in the microwave (stirring a couple of times) until the sweet potato is soft.

Keeping the decorative walnut halves and dark chocolate chips aside, put all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and whisk together.

Once the mixture is fully combined, spoon into the mini loaf baking boxes (making sure there’s an equal amount in each) and then top with the walnut halves and sprinkle with dark chocolate chips.

Bake in the oven for 30 mins (or a little less if you prefer your brownies to be gooier).

Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before eating.

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

Sweet Potato Brownies by The Fat Foodie

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Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake (serves 8)

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake by The Fat Foodie

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake by The Fat Foodie

My partner recently tasked me with producing a vegan chocolate avocado cake just because it looked intriguing and never being someone who shirks from a challenge, I decided to give it a go. This vegan cake mix uses avocados (and a small amount of coconut oil) in place of butter. As someone who worships at the altar of butter, I was pretty sceptical as to whether this chocolate avocado cake would turn out to be remotely tasty, but by God, I was wrong!

Without the addition of butter I was convinced that the vegan chocolate avocado cake would be dry and dense, but the chocolatey sponge cake emerged from the oven with a beautifully light and delicate crumb, while also being very moist and fudgy. The cake is sandwiched and covered in a very simple chocolate cream made from avocados, cocoa and icing sugar, and although I could taste the avocados in the frosting, in my opinion it only lent the cake a light, fresh flavour as opposed to making it taste as though it contained vegetables.

This vegan chocolate avocado cake kept in the fridge for a good four or five days (under cling film) and even by its final day in this world it had not lost any of its moist texture. Although the original recipe did not call for any decoration I’m pleased I included walnuts on the top of the cake because they added a nice crunch to the cake’s texture and a lovely nutty flavour which complemented the avocado icing.

The Gorgeous Colour Palette of Mashed Avocado and Cocoa

The Gorgeous Colour Palette of Mashed Avocado and Cocoa

If I could offer one tip when it comes to making this cake it’d be that you have to use really ripe avocados because they need to blend well with the other ingredients, for both the cake mix and the icing. One of my so-called ‘ready and ripe’ Marks and Spencer’s avocados was nowhere near ripe and I had to pick bits of hard lurid green fruit out of my cocoa icing which was pretty annoying. However, all in all, I’ll definitely make this incredibly flavoursome cake at some point again.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

3 cups of gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

40g cocoa powder

2 tsps. baking powder

2 tsps. bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp of salt

¼ cup of melted coconut oil

60g ripe avocado (mashed)

2 cups of water

2 tbsps. white vinegar

2 tsps. vanilla extract

2 cups sugar

For the icing:

100g ripe avocado (mashed)

2 cups icing sugar

24g of cocoa powder

50g of walnut halves (to decorate)

Method:

To make the cake:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/350°F/Gas mark 4.

Grease or line with greaseproof paper two 9 inch cake tins.

Put all of your cake ingredients (except the baking powder, bicarb, water and vinegar) in a large mixing bowl.

Add the baking powder, bicarb, water and vinegar and whisk until all of your ingredients are combined.

Pour the cake batter evenly into the two cake tins and put in the oven.

Bake for at least 30 mins or until a skewer poked into the middle of the cakes comes out clean.

Leave to cool.

Freshly Baked Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cakes by The Fat Foodie

Freshly Baked Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cakes by The Fat Foodie

To make the icing:

Put your avocado, icing sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl and whisk together. (I added a little dash of water because I felt the icing was a little bit too thick.)

Once your cakes are cool, use some of your icing to sandwich your cakes together and then put the rest on the top of the cake and (if you have enough left over) ice the sides of the cake. (I just made my cake so it had a generous amount of icing on the top.)

Top with walnuts if you fancy and serve.

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake by The Fat Foodie

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake by The Fat Foodie

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