A couple of months back at the behest of a friend and for the sheer challenge of it, I decided to follow the paleolithic diet. After 30 days, I realized I felt great, I was sleeping better and feeling less cranky. This made me want to continue. In order to do so I decided to follow the primal blueprint. I really love food! This love of food began for me as a child in the kitchen, more notably it began with baking. Eating ‘paleo’ or ‘primal’ is a lifestyle that makes baking hard if not a challenge. Eating ‘paleo’ or ‘primal’ promotes many things, but two that I find very important. One, eat what is most nutritious and beneficial for your body, and two, eliminate sugar. Clearly baking does not fit with these two guidelines. Broken hearted, I found substitutes such as almond flour and coconut flour, both nutritious flours but harder to bake with, especially when trying to eliminate/replace both refined sugar and vegetable shortening or oil. All in all, baking is a complicated equation, most of the times everything balances out, as soon as you start to replace and/or eliminate elements in the equation, the end result does not add up.
Yesterday was the fateful day I attempted on of my childhood favorites. Cake. I took the easiest classic recipe from my Grandmother’s cooking bible.Instead of regular flour, vegetable shortening and the 2 cups of sugar the recipe called for, I used coconut flour, agave and good old classic butter. I have to confess my utter failure. The cake was edible but there is a lot of tweaking that needs to be made. I am adamant that I will be able to master this recipe. I will make the cake of my childhood memories for the present healthy adult in me. It’s okay to indulge sometimes, 80% of the time I’m on target with my health goals, though I aim to follow those goals a 100 percent of the time. Here is my indulgent suggestion for you…
Fluffy Yellow Cake/Martha Washington Cake
For this recipe you will need
ingredients
I cup of shortening
2 cups of sugar
4 eggs yolks
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3 cups of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
3 teaspoon baking powder
I cup of milk
4 stiff beaten egg whites (beat till they form peaks)
Directions
1. Cream shortening and add sugar
2. add egg yolks and vanilla
3. beat WELL
4. add sifted dry ingredients ( flour, salt, baking powder) alternatively with milk and fold in egg whites
5.pour batter into 3 8-inch pans
6. place in oven at 350 degrees Celsius
7. leave baking for 30 minutes (check cakes at the 25 mark)
*use a toothpick to see if the batter is still raw, if the toothpick comes out clean your cake is done!
Lemon Frosting
For this recipe you will need
Ingredients
1 3/4 icing sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon cream
1/8 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 3/4 icing sugar
Directions
1. combine sugar with butter lemon juice, cream and lemon peel.
2. beat until smooth
3. add 1 3/4 cup of icing sugar
4. beat until frosting has a ‘spreading’ consistency
5. If the icing is too thing then add more sugar
( I also added some toasted coconut flakes and some coconut shreds to the top layer for decorative purposes!)
*for this cake I used double the amount of frosting to cover the whole cake and the in between layers.
So there you have it! An indulgence of the most decadent kind. It’s okay to indulge once in a while, a cake like this is great to make because you can see how much sugar goes into baking. If this is how much you put into your cakes, imagine what is the ones you buy in stores! So invite some friends over and have some nice Earl Grey tea or herbal tea and make of an afternoon of it! Enjoy treating yourself! So next time around I hope to have prefect my coconut flour version of this cake, without gluten without sugar, and definitely without icing… once perfected I’ll be happy to indulge more often with a nice slice of coconut flour cake! In the meantime have a slice of Fluffy Yellow Cake/Martha Washington and enjoy eating it too!
If you have any questions drop me a line!
P.s. Best priced coconut flour in Montreal can be found at Les Douchers du Marche in the Atwater Market.
haaf
Yummy Eats & Healthy Treats 
