Faithful blog readers, I'm turning the blog over to a good friend of mine, Stephanie Wardrop, author of Prom and Prejudice.
Thanks, Nicole, for
letting me visit the blog. Georgia , the main character of the Snark and
Circumstance series – a contemporary YA update of Jane Austen’s Pride
and Prejudice – is a vegan baker. In fact, in the final installment, Prom
and Prejudice, she ends up selling some of her wares to help the drama
club. I’ll let her tell you about herself and her baking:
Hey, blog readers. I’m going to share with you an amazingly
good recipe that will not seem amazingly good to you at first. When I made it
for my (boy)friend Michael, I purposely did not tell him that there is a secret
ingredient. He thinks vegan food is weird enough, and if I’d told him that
there was cauliflower in this chocolate cake, he would have run right out to
the nearest farm and bitten a chicken. But he had and he loved it – and so has
everyone else who has eaten this.
I got the recipe from one of my favorite blogs and recipe
sources,
CHOCOLATE COVERED KATIE.
She’s also on Facebook and Pinterest and makes these really healthy really
chocolate-y desserts that will
freakin’
change your life.
So if you are willing to try something that seems a little
odd – and be rewarded with moist delicious chocolate awesomeness, here’s the
recipe. And if you want to win a copy of
the book I’m in, leave a comment about the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten but
actually liked and Nicole will pick a winner. (Note: Prom and Prejudice is the last installment in a series of e-novellas, so you may want to read the first
three first J)).
Chocolate Covered
Katie’s Vegan Chocolate Cake with a Secret Ingredient:
§ 3/4 cup flour
§ 1/2 tsp baking
soda
§ 1/2 tsp salt
§ 1 tsp baking
powder
§ 1/4 cup
unsweetened cocoa powder (20g)
§ 2 tsp ener-g
powder, or 2 tbsp ground flax. You can omit; the cake just won’t rise as much.
§ 1/3 cup xylitol or
sugar (64g)
§ 1/8 tsp uncut stevia or 4
nunaturals packets (or 1/4 cup more sugar)
§ 1/2 to 1 cup mini
chocolate chips (60-120g) (Do not omit. The recipe just won’t be the same if
you do.)
§ 1 tbsp pure
vanilla extract
§ 2 loosely-packed cups frozen cauliflower, thawed completely but not cooked (250g) (Or omit and sub 1 cup canned pumpkin,
if cauliflower is too weird for you. I might even like the pumpkin version
better!)
§ 1/2 cup milk of
choice (soy, rice, almond) For pumpkin version, use just 1/3 cup milk (or
1/2 cup if omitting oil).
§ 3 tbsp oil
(or omit and increase milk to scant 2/3 cup, for a lower-fat option)
Preheat oven to 350F. Oil
an 8×8 square baking dish. Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, and mix well. (I like to sift all of mine). In a food processor, combine
all liquid ingredients and the cauliflower blend until super-smooth. (Lumps are
going to tip off people that there is something weird in this recipe, so make
it smooth). Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix until just combined, then
pour into prepared pan and bake 30 minutes.
Her website has an easy and soooo good chocolate peanut
butter frosting recipe that is perfect for this cake. Give it a try!
Tell Nicole below about something weird that you and liked.
You could win yourself a snarky little YA romance! Or just buy it and the three
enovellas that lead up to it right here on Amazon or here at B&N.
Georgia Barrett is beginning to realize that her arch-preppie lab partner, Michael Endicott, is not at all the snob-hole she once thought. Too bad Georgia doesn’t see him for who he really is until he starts dating a poised and polished senior.
Georgia knows she should settle for his friendship, especially since telling him how she really feels would mean risking losing him altogether. But her heart tells her a chance at love might just be worth dropping her trusty shield of snark. And Georgia’s determined to find out.