New Beginnings

I want to start a blog of my baking. I'm hoping to make it a mixture of attempts at low fat baking and regular, pretty fat filled cupcakes. Obviously the two may not go hand in hand but I know that while the aim should always be to make things as healthy as possible, sometimes a sugar soaked snack isn't going to go amiss. So hopefully the blog will feature a bit of both and ocassionally a combination of the two: a pretty and healthy cupcake. That's the goal anyway. If I can make a healthy cupcake that looks and tastes like one with sugar and butter, I'll be a hero of the baking world.So going forward on the blog, healthy recipes will be green and regular ones will be blue. Not that you'll need to be indicated I think - the butter and sugar levels will probably tip you off. ;)

The reason for the healthy baking is that I started Weight Watchers back in September because I stepped on the scales one day and discovered I was the heaviest I've ever been. I've been with my boyfriend for about 18 months and the only downside of the fact he's a fantastic cook is that my weight has slowly crept from 'very overweight' to 'frightening'. I'm getting to an age where if I didn't do something soon it was going to have real long term effects on my body - so I opted for a weight loss technique that wouldn't be completely crippled by my love of baking. Since September I've lost over 4 stone (56lbs) and am starting to feel really great. In the last month or so I've gone from just cutting back the fattening stuff, to choosing healthy options because they're actually better for me.

Regular baking just isn't healthy or good for you on a regular basis, no matter how you swing it. Its full of sugar, fat and white flour - all the really bad things in their purest form. None of those things are good on their own so when you combine them you get incredible taste but it's not so good for the fat intake. So the big aim is to create really delicious baked goods that are low in fat and with easy to buy ingredients. If I have to go into a health food shop to buy half the stuff, it's a nono. Its one of my real pet hates with lots of famous chefs; not all of us have the money or inclination to faff about in 5 shops getting the ingredients for one recipe. I bought a book earlier this week called Secrets of Fat Free Baking. At first I glanced through it and seemed to have broken the rule about easy access ingredients. I'm looking at stuff like prune butter, non fat buttermilk and oat bran. None of them things I've seen while browsing around Tesco... But upon closer inspection (and an actual visit to Tesco) it was clear they were all easy to make or easy to find.. 

With regard to the regular and pretty cupcakes, it's what I've been doing for the last year or so. I love experimenting with new flavours and decorations and have even had a couple of examples of selling batches to friends. My favourite books are the Hummingbird Bakery book and their new Cake Days book. They're a complete juxtaposition to the healthy eating aim though since the frosting alone is generally about 400 calories....per cupcake! Eeek. Definitely just a one off treat. 

Thank you for reading the rambling. I promise not to do it often.