Reece's Cupcakes

Tom and Jess today!

Okay so for various reasons (not least because of our ongoing and undying love affair with peanut butter AND the recent discovery that Sainsbury's basics peanut butter is both amazing and cheap) we decided that a drizzly saturday REQUIRED cupcakes - and what better way to adapt our newly formed muffin recipe than into the greatest sweet on the planet - reece's pieces. The icing alone was good enough, but combined with chocolate cupcakes - unbeatable.

This recipe has quite a few specialist ingredients BUT it is vegan, gluten free, protein-filled and overall not incredibly unhealthy (except for the icing, but trust us, it's worth every calorie).

You're going to need the ingredients for the garbanzo muffins but with a few extra tweaks: makes around 10 (fairly large) cupcakes


1/2 cup Gram Flour (or chickpea or garbanzo beans - these things have too many names)
1/2 cup Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (I use Doves Farm)
1/2 cup Oats
1/2 cup of Soft Brown Sugar
3 tsp Soya Protein Powder (or substitute for 1 tbsp Cornflour)
3 tbsp Carob Powder (or you can use cocoa powder if you prefer)
3 tbsp Soya Butter
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 ripe Bananas
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Distilled Vinegar
1/4 cup Peanuts
1/2 cup Almond Milk (or any other dairy free alternative)
10 1/2 tsp Black Cherry Jam
10 1/2 tsp Peanut butter

Make these in the same way as the garbanzo muffin recipe (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/garbanzo-banana-muffins-with-cherry-jam.html), substituting the spices for the carob powder, the raisins for the peanuts and adding the peanut butter and jam to the centres.

Next you want to make up a batch of Jess' peanut butter frosting (the very definition of icing on the cake!) using:


1/3 cup Peanut Butter (use whatever type you prefer, other nut butters would work too if you wish!)
1/3 cup Dairy-free Butter
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (this is an absolute necessity. And once again, worth every penny)
A few splashes of non-dairy milk (we used almond)
1 1/2 cups Icing Sugar
Optional - 2 tsp Maple Syrup (we used agave here)


For instructions see the second part of the recipe here (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/vegan-gluten-free-chocolate-peanut.html).

Spread this on top in around a centimetre thick later, eat the rest of the bowl using you spoon/fingers/hands/face/tongue, and then enjoy!

Raw Food Truffles

Tom here,

These truffles are a recipe from my mum, which make a regular appearance each christmas. Despite being really delicious they are about as close to healthy as truffles get and have no added sugar at all. Quite a simply recipe to make as well, and would be even simpler if you had a nut grinder (instead of a pestle and mortar that I used to hand grind all the cashews!) Raw foods recipes are becoming more and more popular and these are a tasty and simple way to introduce people to raw food cooking styles.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup ground Cashews
1 tbsp Cashew Butter (I made mine by accident whilst breaking my coffee grinder - oops, worked well though!)
1/2 cup of Dates
1 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
1 tbsp Cocoa Powder
1-2 tbsp Apple Juice (optional)
Icing Sugar to coat

The extra cashew butter is entirely optional but give a nice richness to the truffles.

Method:

Soak the dates in boiling water until the water is cooled
While this happens, mix together the cashews, oil, paste and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl
Once the dates are soaked (should take around 15 minutes) pour away the excess water as you don't want this and then blend the dates down using a hand blender or food processor
Mix everything together into a dough-like paste (you could equally do this simply by throwing everything into a food processor, if you're lucky enough to own one!)
If the mixture seems a bit dry add tablespoons of apple juice until the dough comes together
I then like to pinch off walnut-sized lumps and roll them in icing sugar to give a nice coating
Make sure your hands a damp as you roll them in your palms so the dough doesn't stick too badly (it will somewhat anyway)
Refrigerate for an hour or two and serve

These should last for around a week in an airtight container in the fridge. This recipe can be easily added too or adapted to other flavours. Originally the recipe used ground almonds which work well. Most other nuts could be used as well.

I really didn't think these would go down very well at the wine and cheese night, so only made a few as well as the dark chocolate and orange truffles (the definitely less healthy version!) but actually everyone seemed to love these and prefer them to the others. They're really sweet without being overly rich (which after an evening of cheese and crackers was just right I think).

As always let us know any versions you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com!

Update - Apple Fudge Brownies

Tom here,

Okay so after a hard(ish) mornings revision and a run in the rain I decided I had all the motivation I needed to get creative in the kitchen and...well I won't say it was exactly the success I was hoping for, but it kinda worked. I may have another try and tweak this later. I tried to keep this as low calorie as possible which may not have worked all that well, I may tweak this again later with another attempt. My logic with this recipe was to try to create a sort of fudge syrup (which has worked before) to give the cake a toffee-fudgy flavour in the background. This turned into more of a porridge, but was still ridiculously tasty so that worked out. My brownies were lacking in some vanilla as I ran out, which really made a difference. Definitely make sure to get some nice vanilla flavour in this (whether paste or extract) as it really makes a difference. Overall, not a complete success but a tasty brownie nonetheless which I will perfect at a later date (when exams aren't looming over my shoulder!)

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked Black Beans
1/2 cup Cocoa
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Oats (if gluten free use certified oats)
1/2 cup Dates
1/4 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Hazelnuts
4 tsp Cinnamon
2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
Pinch of Salt
1 ripe Banana
1 Apple
1/4 cup Soy Milk

This recipe requires a food processor, it might work with a hand blender (as the other ones did) but having a food processor makes life worth living so if you have one, crack it out! Also I made the mistake of adding cloves to mine to try and compensate for the vanilla. This does not work. Mine just taste like clove now. Very disappointing.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
First to make the fudge syrup, put the dates and raisins in a cup and cover with boiling water and leave until cool (around 15 minutes)
Next, put the oats in the food processor and blend until pretty small (like 30 seconds). No need to wash out the bowl as we're going to use it again in a minute but tip the oats into another cup and cover with about a centimetre of cold water and leave until the dates and raisins are cooled.
Once this has happened, blend the dates and raisins into a syrup using a hand blender.
Place this along with the soaked oats and sugar in a small saucepan and heat until the sugar is fully dissolved
Cut up the apple and banana and pulse in the food processor until roughly chopped.
Add the beans, cinnamon, vanilla, soy milk, salt and fudge syrup and blend until smooth(ish)
Bash the hazelnuts in a pestle and mortar until broken down
Add these to the food processor and pulse until mixed (don't blend unless you don't like chunks of nut)
Pour into 2 greased baking tins and bake in the oven for half an hour(ish) until a knife comes out clean when inserted into the centre
Cut each tin into eight and enjoy!

Nutritional Information: (calculated using myfitnesspal.com)



                       Calories   Carbs     Fat     Protein     Sodium     Sugar
           Total:      2578      444       68         72           2398       269
 Per Serving:         161        28        4           5            150         17