Spiced Apple, Hazelnut and Date Loaf

We have a load of apples at the moment, from a neighbour's tree (thank you!), that needed something doing with them. We've frozen lots, stewed lots more and this cake was the first of the baking to start using them up! It's adapted (a lot!) from a recipe in a recent Sainsbury's magazine - the original has parsnips and apricots in, here's the recipe if you're interested. My version has apple, hazelnuts and dates in but still uses the original combination of spices and is really very easy to make.

Spiced Apple, Hazelnut and Date Loaf

Ingredients
150g plain flour
150g wholemeal spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
10 cardamon pods, seeds removed and crushed
4 eggs, lightly beaten
75ml date syrup
70g pear and apple spread
50ml apple juice concentrate
100ml vegetable oil
2 apples, peeled, cored and roughly diced
100g chopped hazelnuts
100g chopped dried dates
Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C (350 degs F / gas mark 4). Grease a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Mix the flours, baking powder, spices, eggs, date syrup, pear and apple spread, apple juice concentrate and oil together in a bowl.
3. Fold in the apple, hazelnuts and dates and transfer to the prepared tin.
4. Bake for an hour and a half until golden and risen and a skewer comes out clean.
5. Leave to cool in the tin then turn out.

October Bake it! - Ginger Cake

I enjoy 'normal' baking too, i.e. with lots of sugar, and have been following a few blogs on the subject. There's so many out there but I do enjoy the blogs of the Great British Bake Off finalists, Miranda Gore Browne and the Pink Whisk. The Pink Whisk introduced me to the Bake It! club, recipes are posted each month and everyone has a go at the same recipe. So... I thought why not try and adapt a Bake It recipe to be free of refined sugar? The October recipe is Ginger Cake and here's my adaptation :-). It tastes good and looks just like the original really! The method is very similar, I just changed a few of the ingredients. The original recipe is here.

Ginger Cake
Ingredients
125g butter
80g granulated fruit sugar (I used Fruisana)
85g date syrup
85g apple and pear fruit spread
200ml milk
250g self raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
a little sugar-free apricot jam

Recipe
1. Grease a 2lb loaf tin. Preheat the oven to 160 degs C (gas mark 3).
2. Melt the butter, fruit sugar, date syrup, fruit spread and milk in a saucepan. Leave to cool for five minutes.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the melted ingredients.
4. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture. Stir well.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 45-50 mins til a skewer comes out clean.
6. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.
7. Brush with a little sugar-free apricot jam.

 I'm afraid I then cheated a little as I wanted to ice the cake but haven't figured out how to make icing without icing sugar. So I made a ginger buttercream icing (using 40g butter, 100g icing sugar, 20g finely chopped stem ginger and 1tbsp milk) and decorated it using slices of stem ginger. Here's the result (after a few slices were already eaten!):

Fruit and Nut Slice

Over the weekend I made (and ate most of!) this lovely fruit and nut slice. It is very easy to make in between looking after my lovely little daughter and tastes excellent! I would describe it as somewhere between a flapjack, a cereal bar and one of those nice Rawr bars you can buy. It uses pear and apple spread to sweeten it, which looks disturbingly like marmite but doesn't taste like it! The recipe is from Jane Sen's "Healing Foods Cookbook" which also has some other nice sugar-free cookies and cakes... looking forward to trying them soon :-).

Fruit and Nut Slice
Ingredients
150g (5oz) raisins
150g (5oz) nuts (I used hazelnuts but any would do)
4tsp pear and apple spread (or other fruit concentrate)
85ml (3fl oz) sunflower oil
75g (3oz) oats
150g (5oz) plain flour
85ml (3 fl oz) water

Recipe
1. Grease a 7" flan case. Preheat oven to 190 degs C (gas 5 / 375 deg F).
2. Blend the dried fruit and nuts til finely chopped.
3. Mix all the ingredients together til well combined.
N.B. the recipe calls for everything to be added to the blender, mine wouldn't have coped with that so just mixing it in a bowl worked fine! I guess you'd have a smoother mix if you blended everything.
4. Pour/press the sticky dough into the flan case.
5. Cook for 30 mins or until browned.
6. Cut in case and leave to cool before serving.

Sorry no photos... it got eaten too quickly!