Healthy Cakes

Is there such a thing as a healthy cake, I hear you ask? Well I am sure that there are really properly healthy, sugar free, fat free, gluten free, raw, low calorie cakes out there, but I'm afraid that that would take all the fun out of eating cake for me. So what I prefer is taking a normal, sweet, fatty, yummy cake and chucking something healthy in.

An example would be banana and walnut loaf- all the goodness of banana and walnut, wrapped up in all the yumminess of cake.

I made some chocolate brownies yesterday, and they had a secret ingredient... they were widely held to be delicious, and nobody realised that in fact they contained a whole courgette!

This is the recipe: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7946/courgette-brownies.aspx

I found the mix a little dry so added a bit of water, and I didn't get as far as the icing as I had to start eating the brownies as soon as they were ready! It was a good way to jazz up some of the Freedom frozen vanilla desert which is not very exciting. Overall I am very happy with the results! (Often my cakes have 'issues', so I was glad that even though I tampered with the recipe these turned out fine). I'll post a pic when I get a chance to plug in my iphone, it's elsewhere just now charging.

Also a quick update regarding my Easter Egg post below, Divine dark choc eggs with brazils have been found with 50% off here:

http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/detail/578116_Divine_Darkly_Egg_with_Brazils_180g.html

Also Animal Aid have some Easter specials on their boxes of chocolate:

http://www.animalaidshop.org.uk/specials.htm

I had a couple of thoughts of 'features' I could add to my blog, one being 'vegan quote of the day' and the other being 'vegan celebrity of the day' (Ignoring the fact that I don't post anywhere near daily, but once a month would be too infrequent and sometimes I don't post every week, so it can be 'of the time period between this post and the next'). I'm not too sure I like the celebrity worship culture that exists in the UK/ USA, but nevertheless there are some talented, influential people who are vegan and that's worth celebrating, plus I like to post a little eye candy on my blog now and again... and I'm not talking about the cakes.

I thought an appropriate 'Vegan Celebrity of the Day' for the Easter period would be Casey Affleck, since I found this pic of him [eye candy alert]:

I have no idea why he has a bunny on his shoulder but there ya go!! Casey has been vegan for 12+ years, and his wife, Summer Phoenix is also vegan (the whole Phoenix family are/were). He talks about his veganism in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COQVRYPRsCY

Vegan Quote of the Day (again appropriate for Easter!!)

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. ~Harvey Diamond

I have always wondered a bit about this quote but I assume he is meaning a 2 year old baby, with teeth.