Henrietta's lovely book, Clean Cakes, is full of imaginative ingredients all beautifully put together - and they’re good for you! We asked Henrietta why her cakes are Clean?

This is how she replied:

"For me, 'clean' ingredients are just pure and natural ingredients; foods that are from the earth in their most natural state with little processing applied to them. Though my book is gluten and dairy free, I also bake with gluten flours and proper dairy, but I choose wholegrain flours like British-grown rye, wheat and spelt and organic butter and yogurts, if it's raw, even better! In my book I love oils like cold pressed extra virgin rapeseed oil, I choose Hill Farm Oils from Suffolk, and wholegrain gluten free flours like buckwheat, brown teff and brown rice, always using Shipton Mill, of course! I choose all my ingredients first and foremost for their great flavours and textures... then it's just a big bonus that they're pretty good for us too.

I also love to use unrefined sweeteners like fragrant raw honey, caramel-tasting coconut sugar and things like mashed banana and apple purée. But I just don't swap equal quantities of caster sugar for honey, for example. I really try to lower the sweetness so the real ingredients and flavours, like fruit, citrus and chocolate, sing. Sugar is added in huge amounts to everything these days and it's just not necessary to use so much!

As well as being about cooking from scratch with quality wholefood ingredients, 'clean' also describes how I source my ingredients with respect for the planet- seasonal and local or sustainably sourced when from abroad. A section of my blog is called Meet the Producer Mondays, and tells my readers all about how I source my ingredients, who and where from.

'Clean' cakes just describes all my patisserie, from biscuits and brownies, tarts and pies, mousse cakes and sponge cakes, petits fours and more, that are made with a lot of love and with the wonderful natural ingredients."

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About Henrietta

Henrietta is a skilled pastry chef, and is the owner of Henrietta Inman Patissière and also Hen’s Clean Cakes. She runs cookery clases and also sells her own delicous cakes at festivals, farmer’s markets and pop-ups.

Henrietta has added one of her beautiful recipes to our website - we thoroughly recommend that you give it a go: Pumpkin, carrot and walnut cake with cashew orange frosting