As you probably know, or if you don’t know find out now, I’ve been off sugar for almost 2 months now. It was also then that I also gave up coffee, and the occasional glass of wine that I sometimes enjoyed in the evening or with friends, and started the autoimmune protocol, or the AIP diet. In retrospect, withdrawal wasn’t as hard as I would have imagined, maybe because (or due to) the fact that I was in bad shape anyway, with a flare of spondylitis. I haven’t felt the need for sweets since then, I haven’t used any sweeteners, just one date, two in the smoothie. As Easter approached, however, I wanted to have a dessert on the table, so I started documenting myself. Below is the result, a cake with just one tablespoon of sugar, no honey or sweeteners of any kind, natural or artificial, no eggs, and just a little coconut and tapioca flour.
Ingredients
For the bottom layer:
- 70 grams of dates
- 2 tablespoons of coconut flour
- 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch
- A spoonful of carob
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- Half a teaspoon of baking soda
- A spoonful of lemon juice
For the coconut layer:
- A coconut (or a can of coconut cream)
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- One tablespoon of coconut sugar
- A packet of gelatin
For the fruit layer:
- A banana
- 70 grams of dates
- 150 grams of blueberries
- 2-3 slices of melon
- 100 ml of coconut water (from the second-layer nut)
- A packet of gelatin
Method of preparation
Soak the 140 grams of dates in enough water to cover them and leave for at least 2-3 hours, then mix them in a blender with part of the water they were in. You should get about 4 tablespoons of paste, half of which we will use for the top, the other half for the fruit layer. We first make the bottom layer, very simply, by mixing all the ingredients (we activate the baking soda with lemon juice first) and kneading until we get a swirly dough, which we spread on the bottom of the tray lined with baking sheet. I have an 18 cm diameter pan with a removable edge. A layer of 2-3 cm should come out. Bake the top in the hot oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes, no more, because it would dry out too much and harden.
For the second layer, the coconut layer, we clean the coconut, make a hole in it to collect all the water from it, carefully, not to lose a single drop. My nut had about 200 grams of water, just as much as I needed. As a backup, in case I couldn’t handle the coconut, I also had a can of coconut cream, but it was ok, the coconut was fine and did its job. I then collected all the inner layer, which I mixed together with the coconut oil that I heated a little so that it was very liquid, with 4 tablespoons of coconut water and a tablespoon of coconut sugar. A pretty hard cream came out. In a kettle I put 100 ml of coconut water and the packet of gelatin, left for 10 minutes, then heated the kettle for about a minute, until the gelatin liquefied and put the coconut cream from the blender on top, mixed for a few seconds and I poured the result over the bottom layer. I put it in the fridge for an hour or two until it hardened.
For the last layer, the fruit layer, I put the banana, the remaining 2 tablespoons of date paste and the blueberries in the blender, of which we save a few for decoration. We do the gelatin thing again, mix it with the fruit, and pour the composition, which is liquid but will harden in the fridge, over the coconut layer. We put it in the fridge for about half an hour, until it is only half hardened, then we put the pieces of melon in it. That’s how I came up with the idea, I didn’t put them from the beginning, because they would have sunk, so the color contrast is more interesting. Now we can add the few kept blueberries, or we can add them at the end. Let’s put it in the fridge again, until it hardens completely.
I left it in it’s mold until the next day, but it can be removed after 2 hours, it is hard and there is no risk of spoiling the shape. I unrolled the edge, removed it from the baking paper and the cake was ready. Light, refreshing and yet dense, a small piece was enough to satisfy a dessert craving on Easter day.
