I’ve never had much of a sweet-tooth; now even less so! Empty calories really don’t float my boat; so for my son’s 1st Birthday I wanted to bake a moist, delicious & nutritious, sugar-free, carrot cake made with quality ingredients and loads of love.
SUGAR-FREE BIRTHDAY CARROT CAKE – Sam’s 1st!
for the cake
340g carrots, peeled and finely grated
190g dates, de-stoned
200g Spelt flour
50g Almond meal
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
150g walnuts, whizzed up
3 eggs
240ml sunflower oil
for the topping
225g cream cheese
1 tbsp honey
1 vanilla pod, seeds
Mandarin and raspberries to decorate
Cake base:
- Preheat the oven to 160ºC.
- Cover the dates with boiling water and set aside for 15 minutes.
- In a large bowl, add the dry ingredients: spelt flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon .
- Stir and combine the dry ingredients before adding the blitzed walnuts.
- Drain the dates, reserving the liquid. Blitz the dates in a blender adding the necessary reserved liquid to create a fine purée.
- Whisk the eggs with the oil a little before adding them to the dry mix. Add the carrots and date purée and stir to combine.
- Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured 23cm cake tin and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. This worked out to be 30 minutes in my new fan oven!
- Once baked, turn out onto a wire rack to cool thoroughly before adding the topping.
Topping:
- Using a wooden spoon, stir the cream cheese to loosen it a little.
- Add the honey and vanilla seeds; stir to combine.
- Once the cake base has cooled, spread the topping evenly over the top surface of the cake.
- Halve the raspberries and skin the mandarin segments before decorating the cake.
- Light the candle, sing Happy Birthday and may all wishes be granted!
JAM x