Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Rum Cream Cheese Frosting

I love spices. The house is still fragrant with ginger and cinnamon after this absolute winner of a cake. Enjoy this moist low carb high fibre and protein treat!Spiced Pumpkin Protein Cake with Rum Cream Cheese Frosting LCHFIngredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup brown keto sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup sour cream (not runny)
  • 1 cup pumpkin puree (if using your own drain very well, must not be watery)
  • 2 tsp vanilla essence
  • 1 cup almond flour (press into measuring cup and level)
  • ½ cup vanilla protein powder
  • ¼ cup oat fibre
  • ¼ cup coconut or peanut flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp xantham gum powder
  • 2 tblspn cinnamon powder
  • 1 tblspn ginger powder
  • 1 tsp all spice powder
  • ¼ tsp cloves (optional)
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg (optional)
  • Frosting: ¼ cup softened butter, 1½ cup cream cheese, 1 cup powdered keto sugar, 1 tsp rum essence, 1 tblspn molasses, optional

Method…<!–more–>

  1. Gently melt butter on stove and when melted stir in and dissolve keto sugar. Whisk well. Turn off heat.
  2. In a separate bowl mix together the sour cream, eggs, pumpkin puree and vanilla essence. Whisk well.
  3. In another bowl mix together all the dry ingredients, including the spices. Whisk.
  4. Add butter/sugar mix to dry mix. Will turn into light doughy texture. Don’t panic!
  5. Add egg/pumpkin/sour cream wet mix to dough and stir or beat lightly until a nice heavy cake batter. Make sure you whisk well to remove lumps.
  6. Your oven should be heated to 350⁰F.
  7. Let batter rest 5 minutes.
  8. Pour batter into a well greased large deep cake or bundt pan.
  9. Place in oven to bake and set a timer for 45 minutes.
  10. Check with a toothpick or skewer and if it comes out clean remove cake immediately from oven.
  11. Let rest 15 minutes and then turn out onto cake rack to cool.
  12. Dust with powdered keto sugar or frost with the frosting recipe.
  13. Frosting: beat together the cream cheese, powdered keto sugar, butter and add the tsp of rum essence … or real rum! (Optional molasses for flavour)
  14. When cake is completely cool spread over frosting.

This cake is utterly delicious, moist, not overly sweet and very satisfying. Be generous with the spices and frosting! Keeps well for 1 week, but if it’s warm store in refrigerator.A visit to the farmers market:

Keto Chocolate Coffee Olive Oil Cake

It’s birthday weekend for my Sweetie, so time to bake. This is my keto version of an olive oil flourless chocolate cake bake. I can’t remember where I got this recipe or when I changed it up, but here it is, in a keto version. Rich, dense coffee flavoured chocolate cake! It’s very very good though not too photogenic.

Summary of what we do:

Filter strong cup of coffee and dissolve sugar in it and stir in cocoa. Beat eggs and olive oil; add almond flour and mix together, combine with wet olive oil mix and lastly add cocoa mix then bake 45 to 50 minutes at 325⁰F/160⁰F

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Keto Raspberry Cupcakes

We’re back from camping at the coast where we were nestled in a temperate rain forest we love deeply and just a few hours drive away. There is something about living in a tented home that speaks to old memories of the soul. Completely unplugged and uncluttered. It’s renewing and a restorative sacred reminder of how simply we can exist. I was sad to leave.

I went grocery shopping on our return and came home with some beautiful raspberries and felt like cupcakes. Here is my final recipe after some hesitation about adding chocolate, I decided they would be lovely without … and they are! Yes, those are strawberries decorating them, I forgot to keep some raspberries back for decorating! I used mint leaves too.

Summary:

Make sure butter, eggs and cream cheese are all at room temperature. It prevents your batter curdling.

Prep your cupcake pan first. Always nice to get that out of the way. We’ll bake at 350⁰F for +-30 minutes. First, melting butter and sugar together; then whisking the dry ingredients together; separating the eggs and beating the whites until stiff; lastly, adding the beaten egg yolks together with the buttermilk and cream cheese and then mixing the batter all together. While baking, make your icing. I made a butter and cream cheese glaze, adding rose and vanilla essence and a few fresh raspberries.

This may make more batter than a dozen cupcakes, so I made two little dessert treats on the side in little flan dishes.

Recipe:

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Cranberry and Lemon Yoghurt Loaf

I made some yummy dried cranberries on Wednesday and used half of them for my toasted keto muesli mix and the rest in this loaf. You can also use sour cream or a mix of both Greek yoghurt and sour cream instead of all yoghurt for this loaf.To summarise: mix your dry ingredients in large mixing bowl. In a pot on low heat melt butter and stir in your preferred keto sugar to partly dissolve sugar and mix in the rest of the wet ingredients; fold into dry mix. Add fruit – any dried or fresh berries are fine to substitute!I have also posted the quick method I used to dry the cranberries below. So much better than shop bought, if you have the time. Continue reading

Fruit Bake

I’m very relieved and pleased. I’ve discovered my food sensitivity to coconut is only coconut oil or coconut butter. After nibbling tiny bits of shaved coconut and increasing it slowly over a few months I am fine. But coconut oil for cooking completely closes up my nose with rhinitis so badly I almost can’t breathe or lie down, let alone sleep and it lasts about 2 days. Turns out the processing of the coconut is what affects me. I did some internet research and this is apparently a thing. What they do to the coconut during this process to give me such a reaction, I have no idea. It started when we used coconut oil to cook with, and took me months to figure out. I had thought it was an allergy I developed to all things coconut. I love everything about coconut, and will happily do without coconut oil, but oh! to be able to bake with coconut flour will be a joy! My next adventure is to try coconut milk or cream, we’ll see. To celebrate I baked this fruit coffee cake with 2 table spoons of delicious coconut flour … small steps… as I’m still super nervous of the terrible symptoms of a reaction, and I was fine!

There are also a few odds and ends I posted after the recipe.

Coffee Cake Fruit Bake

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup of your fave keto sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk/kefir/sour cream
  • 2 tsp vanilla essence
  • Zest of an orange
  • 1 3/4 cups almond flour
  • 2 heaped Tblsp coconut flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • Any fresh or sugar free canned berries, or fruit of your choice

Method:

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A Case for Xmas Cake (more cake … fresh fruit! )

I’m not a fan of glacé fruit of *any* kind and I dislike traditional compressed glacé Christmas fruit cake intensely. It’s the worst! Sticky sickly sweet, weird texture, the glacé fruit has no resemblance of fruit flavour whatsoever, and yucky to eat … and barely a trace of cake. I fall firmly into the non- fruitcake group.

But. I’ve been baking this LCHF cake for Xmas for a few years now. It’s based on a friend of my parents, Kathy, who lives in South Africa. I wrote her recipe up in 1987(!) and have used it as a base since then. It’s evolved into a more keto friendly cake, still a tad high in carbs if you’re on serious keto, but fine for an annual holiday treat. I never ever made the icing though! Not a fan.

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Orange Cardamom Thanksgiving Cake

Omgosh, the flavours of this LCHF cake are fabulous. Good to serve with coffee, as dessert after a meal or freshly baked and still warm with either mascarpone cheese or sour cream too. I kind of like sour cream or Greek yogurt with dessert!

What ingredients should you expect to have to bake this?

You’ll need one fresh orange for the zest and juice for sure, ground cardamon and vanilla paste to get the full flavours. Definitely almond flour and buttermilk. If you don’t like cardamom, ground ginger would work great too!

This was dessert after our Thanksgiving dinner of roasted veggies and duck with keto cranberry sauce.

I’m truly humbled, grateful and thankful for the many blessings we have, loving family and friends, and your sincerely appreciated visits. Thank you!

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