One of the reasons I love blogging so much is the amazing food blogging community. There are so many exciting and innovative food blogs out there now that you wouldn't need to buy another cookbook ever again if you didn't want to (of course i do want to!). Some are written by professionals but a lot are by people like me, who just love getting in the kitchen and cooking, and of course eating!
I spend a stupid amount of time browsing food blogs. Its easy to lose a morning or afternoon daydreaming about food and comparing recipes from my favourite blogs. It's also really exciting when I come across a new blog I love.
I've been doing a lot of blog surfing (is that a phrase?)this week. Anyone who follows me on twitter will have seen that I have been researching red velvet cakes as I made one for the guys at work. The recipe I followed didn't turn out great. It actually tasted really nice but the texture was very dense and the colour was more brown than red. A day or so after I made it, Alissa Huntsman posted a recipe on her blog Easier Than Pie which looks fantastic! I will definitely try this for my next attempt and will let you know how it goes! If only she's posted it a few days earlier!!
See her gorgeous looking red velvet cake here Alisa Huntsman is a professional pastry chef who has a cafe in Nashville. If I'm ever in that part of the world I will be sure to give it a visit, her recipes are always completely droolworthy (definitely not a word but who cares!).
The picture is of my attempt at the classic American cake/ dessert (not Alisas) made with sour cream frosting instead of the traditional cream cheese frosting. I find cream cheese frosting is sometimes a little sloppy and I'm not a massive fan. I will post the recipe for this soon.
Another fave blog is The Cupcake Project. Another well established blog by American food writer Stefani Pollack. She's also a professional photographer so her pictures are always beautiful! She makes some kind of off the wall stuff which I love. One of her most unusual recipes is this one for Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes. Even for the American audience who mix sweet and savory flavours much more than us Brits, I think this one is pushing the boundaries. I don't know if /i'd make these cupcakes as i honestly don't think I would get many takers for them here in the UK, but I do LOVE the idea of her blue cheese butter cream frosting which I will definitely try to incorporate into a recipe soon.
Finally for todays blog roundup, I have just recently discovered this fab UK based gluten free blog, Gluten Free(k) written by Caleigh who is a Coeliac who also has Crohn's Disease. Although I don't have either of these conditions and don't feel the need to go completely gluten free, I do find that cutting down on the amount of gluten we eat can help digestion and generally make me feel less sluggish. My boyfriend is also keen to eat a diet as low in gluten as possible (one of the reasons he doesn't always want to taste my cakes) so I have been experimenting a lot with almond flour, spelt and rye flour as 'low gluten' alternatives. I am hoping to make a gluten free recipe section as my blog grows. Caleighs blog is really vibrant and has given me some great ideas for cutting out even more gluten. I particularly want to try these White Chocolate Brownies. They look so fudgy and gooey!
If anyone reading this has a blog or knows any good ones please post a link to them as I am always excited to discover new food blogs whatever the theme.
For now, thanks for taking a look, the blog is now 3 weeks old and its very early days but I'm so excited to be blogging again!