Stephanie Wardrop, Author of Prom and Prejudice drops by with an Awesome Recipe and a Giveaway!

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.