Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A baker's substitutions

Did you know that red velvet cake came about during war time rations when beet root* was used as a substitute for cocoa?  Jbird turns 30 (!!) this week and I'm making him a red velvet cake with beet root in place of nasty red food colouring.  Every cook needs to practice and as this yummy looking cream cheese swiss meringue butter cream frosting looked a bit complicated, I made this sugar free carrot cake as cupcakes as a practice canvas.  This is a really delicious carrot cake recipe.  

In my goal to avoid refined white sugar (and any artificial sweeteners), I tried using raw sugar.  This gave the frosting a pale tan colour.   To remedy this, I'm going to try making it with a smaller amount of raw sugar.  If that doesn't work, I will add a tiny amount of beet root juice which will give the icing a slight hint of red or pink.  This is unfortunate as part of the delight of a red velvet cake (in my opinion) is the stark contrast between the red cake and the white white icing.  Does anyone have any other suggestions for natural sweeteners?  I'm assuming honey has too strong a flavour.  I'm not going for less calories, just less evil white sugar.  I've thought of buying some natural stevia but for some reason it frightens me.  The question I ask is: if it's so amazing, why have I never heard of it before? 

*beets
**turbinado

I also used butter in place of oil in the carrot cake.  And dates in place of raisins. 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Annabel, we use glucose instead of sugar in baking and it works really well. Things don't take as sweet but are much more healthy because it doesn't have the fructose. Aaron has gone in about 4 belt buckles since we stopped using sugar in our house and just glucose in baking. We also use yacon syrup which is a root vegie when we have it in the garden. You can buy the syrup but it is expensive.

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  2. Thanks Sue! I'll look into finding it, and see about growing it! xx

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