I’m starting another gloriously fun-filled adventure around the sun, dear friends. Feeling bone-deep lucky and loved.
Nothing beats a home-made cake to help celebrate life. (Okay, and maybe a freight of cuddles. Freshly cut flowers are pretty ace too. A lungful of salty air by the sea. And a monthly chocolate subscription from Bean and Goose. But back to the cake …)
Want to eat better, without exiling your taste buds? You're in the right space. This month’s theme is centered around celebratory wholefood cakes and healthified treats. We all love eating cake, but how’s about a nutritional slam-dunk with your next slice? Keep reading!
This wholefood carrot cake is unmercifully flattering for the little work put into it.
Instead of butter and icing sugar, we use protein-loaded ricotta and raw honey.
And in place of boring white flour, we use a combination of wholemeal flour and milled flaxseed. Sneaky swaps like these make me feel energised and nourished after a slice of cake, not lethargic and stuffed.
Go ahead and use regular wholewheat, which will taste scrumtabulous. But fellow kitchen geeks might prefer to play with heritage wheat such as emmer, spelt and einkorn. Ballybrado stone mill in Cork do some very fine heritage organic flours for your kitchen playground. Apart from the boost in fibre that wholewheat offers our microbiome, we'll also get a nice dose of skin-loving vitamin E to tumble through our veins and vivify our cheeks. White flour cannot boast the same.
We include walnuts and flax here too, for their artillery of omega-3 fats which fuel our brain and not our waistline. Lots of hormone-healthy lignans in that flaxseed too. Not bad for a slice of cake!
And yes, before you ask, there is sugar. Coconut sugar is not just another hipsteria colonising Ireland's fashionable cafés. This curious brown sugar actually makes sense. For a start, coconut sugar has a modest mineral content which helps explain why health nuts go loolah for it.
Then there's the taste. Even though it comes from the coconut tree, it is positively not coconutty. Think crunchy caramel crumbs without that sickly-sweet sidekick of regular refined white sugar.
And my favourite bit? It doesn’t make my heart beat like a voodoo drum. Don't be fooled though - it's still a sugar! Just a little less bossy with my blood sugar levels.
So how is it made? Nectar from the coconut palm tree is collected by securing a vessel underneath the tree's flowers to collect its sticky sap. Much of the water content is then boiled off, turning it into a sweet gooey syrup ballistically good on porridge. And fingers. To make a crystallised sugar, the syrup is boiled for longer and left to cool before grinding it into granules. I get mine from my local zero waste bulk store.
But if it’s chocolate you’re after, I’ll have a special recipe using wholemeal rye flour later this month. Or you might like to give these very special chocolate aqua faba cookies a whirl in the meantime (see photo above).
I’m also working on a Jaffa-style spongy cake enrobed in pitch-dark chocolate and joy.
Until then!
Love, light, and lashings of birthday cake,
SJ
x
// Wholefood Carrot Cake//
3 tablespoons milled flax
4 tablespoons organic soya milk (or your preferred milk)
225g wholewheat flour (spelt, einkorn and emmer are heritage wheat)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground chai spice or mixed spice or pumpkin spice mix
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
300g light muscovado or coconut sugar
Handful of finely chopped walnuts (plus more to decorate)
200ml extra virgin olive oil (best measured by volume in a measuring jug)
2 eggs
320g grated carrot (2 large carrots)
About 400g ricotta (we love Irish ricotta from Macroom or Toonsbridge)
About 6 tablespoons of runny raw honey
Step 1
Fire up your oven to 180 Celsius, gas mark 5. Line two conventional 20cm x 20cm brownie tins (or use whatever pair of cake tins you might have, e.g. 18cm circular springform works great too, or three identical bread pans).
Step 2
Let the milled flaxseed bloom and soak in the milk. Set aside.
Step 3
In a large bowl, measure out your flour, spices, baking powder, sea salt, sugar and chopped nuts. Merrily stir it all together like a giddy GBBO contestant for the cameras.
Step 4
Make a well in the centre and add your olive oil, the eggs, the grated carrot and your flax party. Start with the centre and mix really well. Then stir from the centre outwards, until everything is licky sticky delicious.
Step 4
Spoon into your pre-lined tins. Cook for a full 40 minutes in your preheated oven. When the cakes are done, they will lightly spring back to the touch. Allow to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before carefully transferring to a wire rack.
Step 5
To make the filling, just mix the honey and ricotta together. You can sandwich the sweetened ricotta filling between both cakes, once cool enough to touch (hot cake will melt the ricotta). Or you can cut both cakes into 4 quarters, and pile high into a 7-stack mini cake (the 8th stack is chef's bonus. I like to taste it before deciding the level of honey to include in the ricotta, so this step generally results in one less layer!)
Dust with freshly grated nutmeg if you have some (not essential but insanely tasty). Top with extra omega-3 glory in the form of walnuts. And then celebrate the majesty of carrots and Mother N!
My Birthday Cake