Pippa Middleton collaborates on 'heart-healthy' cookbook

Pippa Middleton is publishing a cookbook of "heart-healthy" recipes called Heartfelt in aid of charity the British Heart Foundation - but has admitted she hasn't tried and tested them all despite being the book's author.

The title, a collaboration between Pippa and the BHF with all proceeds going to fund future research, features over 100 recipes, as well as healthy eating advice, and Middleton's experiences of meeting with people who have suffered from heart conditions and benefited from the research that the BHF has funded.

The book was put together by a team of experts, according to Middleton, who also said on the BHF website that each recipe had been "road-tested for cooking practicality and deliciousness". The recipes were informed by Waitrose's Weekend Food editors, who helped to create them, and BHF’s registered dietitians who advised Middleton throughout the process.

"I would like to say I have made every single one, but I have definitely done a good 80% of them," Middleton, 33, conceded in an interview with the Daily Mail. "I made a lot of the dishes at home."

The British Heart Foundation will publish the book on 29th September, priced £19.99. Middleton commented: "Helping to produce this book has been the greatest pleasure for me, bringing together two of the things I care about most – delicious food and healthy living. In fact, I am passionate about both. And I care deeply about the charity which is publishing this book and of which I am an Ambassador – the British Heart Foundation. The work of the BHF is really important. Coronary heart disease is still Britain’s biggest single cause of death, with more than twice as many women dying from this condition as from breast cancer."

She added: "Those of us who put this collection together wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to create simple dishes using everyday ingredients which, in addition to being delicious, are also the sort of food recommended by dietitians for those with a heart condition, or for those at risk of one."

Middleton, who was previously mocked for her debut party planning book Celebrate (Michael Joseph) published in 2012, also told the Daily Mail "credibility" had been her issue with the title and that she "had not earned the right" to have written it so soon.

"I believed in it and I can't blame anyone else, but maybe it might have been better if I had waited a bit longer before doing it," she said of the project. 

Michael Joseph defended the publication in 2013 saying that depsite low sales, it had earned out its £400,000 advance before it went on sale, through foreign rights and serial sales, and it was always "more likely to be an ongoing backlist sale as opposed to the high frontlist one".