Chocolate & Banana Sugar Free Cake

I've been really enjoying the challenge of sugar free cakes (without resorting to buying that slightly disturbing white granular stuff in the supermarket*). This chocolate & banana cake sold out about 4 hours after I put it on the counter. Good, because I am ridiculously proud of it, it's one of the best damn cakes I've ever made. Moist, rich and indulgent (and slightly less terrible for you!). It's sweetened with very ripe bananas & apple syrup, which gives it a richness and really brings out the chocolate flavour without being sickly.
This recipe makes a huge cake! But you can reduce the quantities by a third & use 20cm cake pans for something a little less excessive

Healthy - if you don't count all the butter and cream!

Chocolate & Banana Cake
250g butter (yes, that's a whole packet. But no sugar, so it's fine!)
3 large, very ripe bananas, mashed
175g apple syrup (I like Sweet Freedom. You can use any fruit syrup, but I find apple balances the banana well)
300g plain flour
3 eggs, whisked
50g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
100ml single cream

You'll also need two 23cm springform cake tins, greased & lined, for this.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
Soften the butter in a large mixing bowl & combine together with the mashed bananas and apple syrup. Add the cocoa powder & eggs (it will look a little lumpy and weird, but don't fret! It will be good!). Add the baking powder & flour & mix well. It will make a fairly stiff batter, so add the cream a little at a time until it forms a nice soft batter that clings to the spoon, but succumbs to gravity and flops off back into the bowl after a few seconds. If the idea of raw egg doesn't squick you out, have a quick taste and see if it needs a squeeze more of apple syrup (a lot of the sweetness comes from the overripe bananas, so less blackened ones will need a little help) Divide between the two cake tins and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer, knife or other pointy, prodding instrument jabbed into the cake comes out clean.
Leave a few minutes before turning out of the cake tins and handle with care. Cool on a wire rack, then sandwich together with some whipped cream (a 300ml tub of double cream is plenty for this sized cake) & dust with a little cocoa powder.
Eat with a slightly misplaced sense of virtue

*No offence to those that do, I just find myself staring at the stuff and asking myself "But what is it?!")

Sugar Free Marmalade Cake

I love a challenge, and coming up with new and delicious ways to make cakes sugar free was one I couldn't resist! So I'll be posting a sugar free cake recipe every week for the next month, and doing something a bit different each time. This weeks cake needs a special ingredient - sugar free marmalade!
Sugar free jam & marmalade (technically they are fruit spreads, as they don't contain sugar) is made with fruit, grape juice & pectin. I love Meridian Wild Blueberry Spread & St Dalfour Strawberry Preserve. This recipe uses St Dalfour thick cut orange preserve (its marmalade, folks), which is available in most large supermarkets (hey, if I can find this in rural North Lincolnshire, you can find it. I'm not Yotam Ottolenghi demanding you source sparrow beaks & seventeen types of foraged twig for one sandwich here)

Sticky, delicious & sugar free

Sugar Free Marmalade Cake

175g butter
150g St Dalfour Marmalade (other orange preserves are available)
3 eggs
225g self raising flour

You'll need a 20cm springform cake tin.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/G4. Cream the butter in a bowl & add the marmalade. Add the eggs one at a time. Fold in the flour. It should have a soft consistency that drops from the spoon. If its too thick, add a little milk. If its too thin, stir in a tablespoon of flour (or ground almonds). Pour into the prepared tin & bake for 45 - 55 minutes, or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean. Pretend you're in the Spanish Inquisition and cackle while you poke at your cake.
Turn out onto a wire rack & leave to cool. Spread some of the remaining marmalade on the top for a glossy finish. Eat with a cup of tea, trying not to get sticky fingers on your knitting

This is the kind of recipe that begs to be played around with. Substitute 30g of flour for cocoa powder & use black cherry or raspberry preserve. Or 30g of ground almonds and apricot preserve. The only thing I would suggest is use the darker preserves for chocolatey cakes and the paler ones for lighter sponges. Blueberry preserve in a pale cake comes out looking a bit weird. Not pink exactly, just a bit... wrong.

Oh, Sugar!

The lovely Shelly at Little House in the Corner blogged about giving up sugar for a month, which is an unbelievably brave thing to do, especially as the nights draw in & the soul begins to crave sweet puddings and warming drinks of an evening.
Acknowledging & tacking the unhealthy or sticky aspects of your relationship with food is never easy to do, and I have so much admiration for those who recognise their issues and work on them.
So I had a good long think about the Tearoom. For me cooking is an expression of love, of friendship & of compassion. I make food to make people happy. I have always had the policy of there being sugar free options for diabetics (my scones & teacakes are sugar free, and I offer sugar free jam for toast and cream teas). But I also enjoy a challenge, so for the next month I'll be making sure there is always a sugar-free cake on the counter.

Now when I say sugar, I mean sucrose, the refined granular stuff that goes in your tea. I'm well aware that fruit contains sugar (fructose), dairy contains sugar (lactose). You are also aware of this, so don't wave your finger at me saying 'Apricots have sugar in them'* and missing the point like a like a joyless pedant.

When going sugar free in baking, there are several alternatives to sweetening your treats.

Agave Nectar
The refined juice of the Agave plant, a massive succulent that grows in South America that is also used to make tequila. It is a little sweeter than sugar, but has a distinct flavour somewhere between honey & caramel. It works well in darker, richer cakes that have a lot of dried fruit or cocoa in them.

Apple Syrup
Made (as you might have guessed) from apples, it's a great sweetener for cakes (and lovely on porridge!), and I use it in scones & teacakes. I'm a big fan of Sweet Freedom apple syrup, which is made from apple, grape & carob. I find it much easier to use than apple puree, which is a bit sloppy & tricky to use in cake making, where too much moisture can be the difference between light & delicious cakey noms and something that gets thrown to the chickens.

Dried fruit
Dates & apricots are great for making sugar free chocolate or fruit cakes. They can be chopped or soaked in water & blended to a thick puree. Chocolate brownies made with dates simmered in tea until they collapse into a fragrant mush are pretty damn fine.

Stevia etc
I suppose you could, but what fun would that be?

Sugar-free cake recipe coming soon!

*may Nyarlathotep send his bat-winged, clanking rat-thingys to poke you in the eye and call you a thundering old bellend