Healthy Carrot Cake
- Monday, 06 June 2011
Why have I made carrot cake over ten times in the past three days? To come up with a Healthy Carrot Cake that's low in carbohydrates and gluten-free for you! This fragrant and flavorful cake is also dairy-free and nut-free, if you omit the classic add in of chopped walnuts. I promise you won't miss the raisins in this nourishing carrot cake that's not just healthy "because it has vegetables in it!" ;) The other bad stuff--those culprits named Sugar and Flour--are conspicuously left out of this recipe. All of that grating was totally worth it.
There is a teaspoon of blackstrap molasses--which is technically a sugar--in this recipe. It's a thick, dark iron-rich syrup made from the sugarcane plant. This molasses is potent stuff, and contributes a rich flavor and coloring to the cake. You can leave molasses out to be completely sugar-free, but I think it's worth the 4 grams of carbs.
You can bake the cake into a traditional rectangular loaf, or snack-sized mini muffins. Get creative and have fun with your sugar-free frosting! It pipes well, using a zip top bag with the corner snipped off.
A bit of food coloring can transform your homemade low carb treats into festive, eye-catching confections worthy of special occasions. Check the food coloring label for hidden sugar before you buy. I made the mistake of not checking the label of the Wilton gel coloring I used here, and saw it contained corn syrup, much to my dismay! That pesky Sugar manages to sneak in everywhere, doesn't it? McCormick food colors, found in most grocery stores, are sugar-free. I've tried a couple of organic dyes, and unfortunately neither of them yielded satisfactory results. You need so little coloring for an entire batch of frosting that I'm not too worried about the health effects. If you have any recommendations for natural food dye, let us know in the comments, please.
The frosting is absolutely delicious any color you make it. It's a new and improved Healthy Cream Cheese Frosting, with a special low carb ingredient that might be familiar to the Asian and Indian readers of this blog...
Powdered coconut milk acts to thicken the frosting, while eliminating the greasy taste that comes from not using powdered sugar. Powdered coconut milk should be available at your local Asian grocery store for a reasonable price. The kind I used comes in a can, but I've seen it in packets. Dairy-free readers might want to know that coconut milk powder does contain a milk protein (casein), so it's not dairy-free (here is a dairy-free cupcake topping). Powdered coconut milk to contain 1.5 grams of carbs and 45 calories per tablespoon based on these nutrition facts. You might want to make just a small batch of this frosting--it's that good!
Healthy Carrot Cake
Makes 18 mini muffins or a small (~3 x 6") loaf
Ingredients:
1/4 cup sifted coconut flour
2 Tablespoons oat flour
1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
Scant 1/4 ....
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