Sugar Free Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

100g dried apicots

300g grated carrot

3 eggs

100mls sunflower oil

2 tbsp water

50g sultanas

50g walnuts

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp all spice

1 baking powder

100g ground almonds

150g self-raising flour

Icing:

200g cream cheese (full fat)

100g butter

2 tbsp coconut flour (not desiccated)

2-3 tbsps maple syrup

Preheat oven to 170 degrees

Method:

Put the apricots in a pan with enough water to cover them.

Bring to the boil and then simmer for around 20 mins or until very soft.

Puree in a blender with a couple of tablespoons of the cooking liquid. Set aside.

Add the lightly beaten eggs to the carrots along with the oil, water and apricot puree.

Stir in the sultanas and walnuts.

Add the spices, baking powder and ground almonds to the flour. Stir to combine before folding into the carrot mixture.

Line the base of 2 x 6” tins with grease proof paper. Equally divide the mixture between the tins.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 mins, until a skewer comes out clean.

Place on a cooling rack to cool before trimming the tops and splitting each cake in half to give you 4 layers.

Icing:

Using an electric whisk beat together the cream cheese, butter and coconut flour. Add the maple syrup until you have a consistency of whipped cream. Then use a palette knife to spread the icing between each layer and on the top of the cake.

Decorate with walnut halves or slithers of dried apricot.

Vegan Banana Cake

This banana cake is absolutely delicious and it contains no wheat, dairy, sugar or eggs. As you can see mine caught slightly on top but that added to it weirdly!

Ingredients:

8 Medjool dates, 6 very ripe bananas, 120mls sunflower oil, 120mls date syrup, 100g roughly chopped walnuts, 100g coconut flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Method:

Bring the dates to the boil in enough water to cover. Turn them down to a simmer for around 20 mins until very soft. Remove the stones and mash along with the bananas. Beat in the pil and date syrup. Add the baking powder and xantham gum to the coconut flour. Fold in the walnuts followed by the coconut flour. Tip the mixture into a loaf tin and bake at 170 degrees for between 50 and 80mins (depending on how hot your oven is, they all vary!) and take it out when a skewer or knife comes out clean.

Allow to cool or not, I like all my cake straight from the oven!

BTW I haven't cheated and sprinkled icing sugar on top that's actually coconut flour.

Healthy’ Peanut Butter Chocolate Treats

These are literally the easiest recipe I have ever made!
If you love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups but you would like a healthier alternative then this is for you.

Ingredients:

100g Plain Chocolate (70/85%), melted
2 tbsp peanut butter, pref sugar free

Makes 12

Spoon half the chocolate into individual chocolate molds.
Drop in about a tsp of peanut butter.
Cover with the remaining chocolate.
Place in the freezer.

You can eat these in less than an hour if you like the centre to be soft.
Personally I prefer them to be rock solid all the way through so try and
do it the night before (still always end up eating at least 2-3 before they are
set though) what can I tell you? I’m a pig!

I also do these using cacao butter and powder with agave instead of sugar.
Will do a demo on Youtube and post when I next have the ingredients….

What are your (comparatively) ‘guilt free’ recipes?

Raspberry & Beetroot Cake

This cake is delicious and has half as much sugar as this recipe would normally require. If you divide it into 14 portions there will be about 10g sugar per slice

Ingredients:

Cake:

7 eggs, separated

4 tbsp milk

3.5 oz/200ml sunflower oil

5oz/140g soft brown sugar

7oz/200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla extract

8oz/220g beetroot, grated

Icing:

150g mascarpone

100g cream cheese

25g/5 tsp icing sugar

100g raspberries

Raspberries & mint leaves to decorate

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C/ 325 f/ Gas 3

Using kitchen towel wipe the inside of 2 x 8 inch cake tins with oil.

Whisk egg yolks and milk together.

In another bowl whisk together oil and sugar.

Add to the egg yolks and mix.

Mix together the baking powder and plain flour.

Stir this into the batter followed by the beetroot.

Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until they form stiff peaks.

Use a metal spoon to gently fold in the whites into the pink batter.

Divide the mixture between the 2 tins and bake in the pre heated oven

For about 30 mins until springy to the touch and a skewer comes out clean.

Remove from oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Use a knife or metal spatula to run around the edge of the cake loosening it

from the tin.

To make the icing;

Whisk the mascarpone, cream cheese, icing sugar together and raspberries together.

The berries should be fairly blended but the icing will not be totally smooth.

Use the icing to fill and cover the cake.