I’m busy in the kitchen today cooking up all sorts of goodies for this weekends’ guests. In the oven I have mixed berries reducing to a compote ready to make sugar free chia jam, low carb bread baking and yoghurt making on the kitchen top. To add to this, vegetarian sausage making and some low carb, sugar free cake bites for when the sweet tooth descends. It may sound a lot to be going on, but it’s quite a normal day in this B&B.

I’ve had a few requests for my low carb cake bites-they are a treat, but much better for you than a sugar laded, carb fuelled frenzy cake bought from a shop. The recipe is quite versatile and I’ve altered it in the past to make Chocolate brownies and mince pies.

Cake Bites

200gr Ground Almonds

2 Eggs

200gr Unsalted Butter

100gr Xylitol

1Tbsp Almond Essence

 

It’s very easy, melt the butter and mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. This makes a batter type consistency.

You can then either make in a tray like a tray bake, or turn into muffin cases. They’re quite rich, so I would make smaller muffins, so they cook through properly.

You can either then add small pieces of fresh raspberry and then top with flaked almonds, or you if you’re making into muffin cases-spoon a little of the mixture in then add a small amount of chia jam then top with more of the batter-then you’ll have a great tasting raspberry and almond bake that will rival the ones you get at Costa coffee (one of my fav cakes), and it’s much better for you!

Cook for approx. 20 mins at 170 degrees-but do watch them-cover with baking parchment if the edges of the tray bake are catching before the middle is done.

Chia Jam

200gr berries (your choice, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry)

175ml of water

1 or 2 tsp of xylitol (to your taste) or brown rice malt syrup

4 Tbsp of chia seeds

1tsp of Vanilla extract

Put berries, water and vanilla in a pot and reduce down, squashing any stubborn berries with the back of a spoon.

Add xylitol to your taste then add chia seeds

Store in a clean airtight container in the fridge- it’s a great substitute for ‘ordinary’ jam. Until I started making jam for the B&B,  I didn’t quite realise how much sugar goes into it!

A lot of the recipes I use are from Ellen Picton at Healthaspire on Milford Marina, you can find out more about Ellen here