After close to a week's break from baking, I finally decided to get down to baking again. While I picked up pretty cool skills/tips from my professional baking course, we didn't exactly bake anything very nutritious - and that was one of my main 'gripes' about the course. The nutrition and allergy component was not covered in much detail, and I find myself having to return to online sources/recipe books for information, trends and recipes on baking more healthily/ for special diets.
After my instructor shared her horror stories/ experiences during her hotel pastry chef days, I am also more convinced that most large-scale bakeries don't make anything very fresh, nor are they necessarily very hygienic. And they are likely to have used some kind of chemicals (such as emulsifiers) to bake their sponge cakes in large quantities (which are then frozen). I now have more of an insider view because our teacher made the class make 120 sponges one morning using the huge mixer (to simulate conditions in a real bakery) - and the trade-off was the use of emulsifiers and sponge cake mix to ensure that cakes still turned out nice and soft.
And because I increasingly believe in eating well and eating right - I find it hard to imagine running something really large-scale, as that would probably mean some kind of compromise on the quality/freshness of my bakes.
I digress - back to the vegan chocolate cupcakes! So in the spirit of healthier eating, I decided to continue my DIY R&D efforts to bake more healthily. I found a recipe for vegan cupcakes that contain no sugar, no butter, no eggs - and suprisingly, they turned out relatively scrumptious. Didn't have agave syrup at hand, so honey was used as a sweetener instead.
In addition, I used spelt flour (instead of plain flour), home-made almond milk, virgin coconut oil, valrhona cocoa powder to make the cupcakes. And blended avocadoes give the frosting a nice creamy texture. These vegan cupcakes have to be one of the most nutrition-rich cakes I've made in a while! Of course, the use of more atas ingredients also jacked up my cost; while making DIY nut milk made the whole process more tedious as well. BUT - that it tasted good in the end made it feel worthwhile.
The only thing was that D didn't seem to fancy the slight coconut taste in the cupcakes, so I may do these again using the more neutral tasting canola oil. If all goes well, I will probably start to market this chocolate vegan bake soon - either in cupcake or whole cake form :)
No comments:
Post a Comment