Butternut, sweet potato, pepper and lentil traybake

Gosh, wasn't it a granite-grey and miserable day yesterday? The rain was relentless, and it was so dark, even in the early afternoon. Late autumn and winter make a perfect time for comfort food.
Hearty vegetables and pulses, cooked as casseroles or tray bakes, are great for damp and chilly days.

Ingredients:
4tbsp mild olive oil
1 pack of butternut & sweet potato (350g)
1 pack of exotic mushrooms (200g)
1 red onion
1 carrot
1 sweet pepper
a handful of cherry tomatoes
a handful of fresh herbs (rosemary and thyme)
1 tin of Amy's Kitchen

In a small frying pan quickly fry a finely chopped red onion and carrot (about 3-4 minutes). Add the mushrooms, and cook for another couple of minutes. Set aside.
Place the cubed squash and sweet potato, as well as sliced sweet pepper and tomatoes in a deep ceramic dish/tray, drizzle 2tbsp of oil and mix well. Put the tray in the oven preheated to 180C.
Roast for about 20 minutes, then add the mushroom and onion mix, herbs and lentil soup.
Place the tray back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
Serve hot, with basmati rice.

In this recipe I used a tin of Amy's Kitchen Organic Lentil Vegetable soup, which was part of the latest Degustabox food box. If you don't have this particular brand of soup, any chunky lentil soup will work.

Sweet potato cupcakes with yogurt frosting (reduced calorie recipe challenge)

Sweet potato cupcakes with yogurt frosting
Ingredients:
300g sweet potato, cooked and mashed
150g light brown sugar
2 eggs
170g fat free Greek style yogurt (I used Chobani raspberry yoghurt)
30g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla extract
150g self-raising flour
1/2tsp cinnamon
90ml olive oil
icing sugar + plain Chobani fat free yogurt for frosting
freeze-dried strawberries for decoration
raspberries, blueberries (optional)

Cook the sweet potato in water (cut into quarters), once cooked, take it out of the pan, let it cool, then mash with a fork in a big mixing bowl with sugar and cinnamon. Add the eggs, vanilla extract, ground almonds, baking powder, yogurt and mix well, add the flour and olive oil, mix well again.
Pour the cake mixture into the cupcake/muffin paper cases and place the filled cases in the oven preheated to 180C on a tray. Bake for about 25 minutes, check with the wooden skewer that they are cooked through.
Take the cupcakes out and leave to cool.
Make the frosting by mixing the plain Greek style yogurt with the icing sugar (I have used the Chobani plain yoghurt).
Spread over the cupcakes with a spoon. Decorate with the berries of your choice or freeze-dried strawberries.


Typically I bake almost everything with butter and would have used the soured cream frosting. Using the oil and fat free yogurt in the cake batter as well as the fat free yogurt for frosting makes it a calorie reduced option. Plus using the sweet potato, I added less sugar than usual.

Eddie wanted to participate, so I let him mix the cake batter and also fill in some paper cases. I only had cheap muffin paper cases from Waitrose which won't hold anything, even when double-layered, so the cupcakes got rather wide in the middle.
They look funny but taste great. The yogurt in the batter makes them moist and flavourful, the sweet potato adds the sweetness, so that you can use less sugar.

Here is my mini-cook, eating one of the cupcakes while sitting on his haunches, without waiting for the icing to be added. Well, I suppose we had to try it before decorating, didn't we?

Adding my recipe to lovely Verily Victoria Vocalises blog linky #PoCoLo.