Chocolate Cake Day! What a brilliant excuse to eat some cake, and chocolate at that! As some of you will know, I am on a food journey-trying to get to sugar free, wheat free, low carb. Not the best for chocolate cake potential, I’d say.

However, here in Milford Haven we have the marvellous Nutrionalist Ellen Picton, based at Milford Marina(Click here for info on Ellen & her book), who has been helping me on my journey and also giving me plenty of ideas for better options for breakfasts for my guests. So, who’d have thought, but I have a wheat free, sugar free, chocolate cake recipe! We are delighted to have been certificated by Healthaspire to recognise our efforts towards healthy eating for our guests.

The recipe is taken from Ellen’s new book, ‘The Real Food Cook Book’, for sale at £15 from her direct and also available on Amazon I think and as an ebook, I believe.

I have altered the quantities, as I had one bar of chocolate and it was a bit stronger than her recipe states, plus I have an audience who likes things a bit sweeter (whereas I love 90% chocolate), so I’ve added in a bit of xylitol, which is a sweetener derived from the bark of the birch tree. I understand it doesn’t raise your blood sugar- its has a GI value of 7 and is ok for diabetics and has less than half available carbohydrates of sugar, so I think it’s a good swap.

Anyway, here’s the recipe as I used it:

125gr Bar 81% dark chocolate

125gr butter, cubed

2tsp vanilla paste

2 eggs beaten

83gr Ground almonds

56gr flaked almonds, toasted lightly

3tbsp xylitol

Method:

Melt the butter and chocolate over a low heat. As I use the Aga, I could just let it sit on the top and away it melted.

Take the pan off the heat and add in the vanilla.

Leave to cool slightly, then add in rest of the ingredients

 

Turn into a tray lined with baking parchment. You could use silicone moulds if you wanted, you can see from the photo that my tin was a bit too big, so you can see what I did to make it smaller-it’s a useful trick if you ever want to make smaller quantities of a recipe.

I love recipes like this because you just use one pan-saves on the washing up!

Pop in the oven 175 degrees, or for me, bottom rung of the Aga on a windy day!

It should be ready after 25-30 minutes, you want the top quite set but the middle gooey, as it will continue to cook in the dish whilst it’s cooling. If you leave it in the oven until it’s all cooked through, like you might with a conventional cake, by the time it cools it will be too dry.

 

 

 

 

So, for me, today, on Chocolate Cake day, I can indeed have my cake and eat it-go on enjoy!