no-added-sugar cake

[Hilary B]

I have a friend who is diabetic, so I decided to apply my ingenuity to making a cake she can eat.
3 over-ripe bananas
100g butter (or marge)
3 eggs
170g SR flour
1 level teaspn baking powder
100g chopped dried apricots

Mash the bananas, cream with the butter, beat in the eggs 1 by 1, adding a little of the flour with each.
Combine the rest of the flour with the baking powder, stir in, along with the apricots.
Line a tin with greaseproof or baking parchment (I used my loaf tin, can't tell you the size, it's 'the one I've got'), but 8" round tin or whatever is handy, as long as you are used to baking cakes in it) and pour in the mixture.
Bake as for a 3-egg Victoria Sponge/Madeira (according to the tin size and shape) but add an extra 10 mins per hour of the usual time. It's done when it is 'springy', like a Victoria sponge.
It was very popular with the intended recipent, and I plan on making another one this weekend.

[Moo's Mum]

Thanks Hilary. Father in law is diabetic, so may give this a try. I suppose you could add a wee bit of cocoa powder, as long as it's unsweetened?

[donnakebab]

Over ripe bananas have a lot more sugar in them and they have a high GI, before they get to the over ripe stage,which diabetics are advised to avoid. Mango also has a high GI.

For example 100 gms of your average banana is made up of 31 gms of carbs. As it ripens more sugar is released so that figure rises.
Mango has 20 gms
Apple has 10 gms and is classed as medium GI
Lime and Rhubarb are the lowest with around 1 gm.

I have this information from a book called The Diabetes Revolution by Dr Charles Clark and Maureen Clark (his wife a professional author on diet and nutrition).

I don't know how your friend controls their diabetes but it would be interesting to see what effect a piece of cake has on their blood sugar levels. When I feel like giving myself a treat like a biscuit with my tea or indeed a piece of cake I have to up my insulin dose accordingly. It's not something I do very often.

Some people say I should use an artificial sweetener for baking but I don't like the taste and there has been a lot of research in the past about the health risks of using them too much.

I'm seeing a diabetes nurse on Monday so I'll ask her if she knows where I can get information on using fruit in baking instead of sugar. other than that I'm being referred to a specialist clinic soon so I should be able to find out there.

When I was first diagnosed I was told to restrict myself to two pieces of fruit a day. That includes tomatoes, and not bananas.

[Hilary B]

All I know for sure is that my friend enjoyed her cake and hasn't reported any problem. I purposely didn't call it diabetic cake, because I had heard that too much fruit, and especially over-ripe, was not good.

[dominic10]

In the past I have made a cake with a branded sweetner - from information on their website. I have never tasted anything so foul in all my life - had to chuck it out. I'm going to try this recipe from River Cottage:

8 oz self raising flour
pinch of salt
4 oz butter or "margarine"
12 oz chopped rhubarb (see note below)
4 oz caster sugar
2 large eggs, slightly beaten, just to break up the yolks
1 tbsp demerara sugar (optional)

but with much reduced sugar as my rhubarb plant is quite old. We have been eating it without sugar this year and I read mature rhubarb plants produce sweeter stalks.

Grease, line & grease again a 1lb loaf tin.
Chop the rhubarb. Use quite thin rhubarb (maximum 20mm diameter), and chop it into slices about 10 to 15mm wide. Dark pink rhubarb looks the best.
Pre-heat oven to 180C, Gas Mark 4 or 5 (depending on your oven).
Add the salt to the flour, then rub the fat into the flour in the usual way to resemble fine bread crumbs. Mix in the caster sugar, chopped rhubarb (raw), then finally the beaten eggs. The mixture will be fairly dry and heavy for a cake mixture. Put the mixture into the loaf tin, level it out and then sprinkle the top with the demerara sugar.
Bake it in the oven for about 45 to 50 minutes until it looks done (ie, light brown and cake coloured). To test for doneness, press the top lightly with your finger and if it springs back, then it is done, or you can test with a skewer. If the top gets brown before the cake is cooked through, cover the top loosely with foil to stop it from burning.
Leave the cake in the tin for 15 to 30 minutes to firm up before turning it out carefully onto a wire cooling rack. At this stage it will probably be a bit fragile and wobbly. It is nice served warm as a pudding, but the following day it will have cooled and firmed up enough to eat as cake.

[Hilary B]

Rhubarb grown in the dark is sweeter than that allowed to grow more naturally, my Dad always put a variety of old buckets (with holes in the bottom) over the rhubarb crowns early in the year, made the stalks grow longer and I'm sure they were sweeter than the ones that grew without any such restriction.