If you’re looking for a treat for dessert, afternoon tea, or for a special occasion, then try my Diabetic-friendly Cherry Cake.
It has approximately 12.8 grams of carbs per slice!
This recipe features Morello cherries, which are the perfect accompaniment for an almond meal cake.
Slight tart, Morello cherries are also relatively low in carbs at only 18.4 grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams.
They come in a jar and are available at any leading supermarket.
Icing sugar alternatives
You can’t have a cake like this without a sprinkling of icing sugar on top, but if you have diabetes like me, trying to find a sugar-free alternative can be tricky.
I had to search around a bit to find the right substitute.
There was a sugar-free icing-sugar available at my local health food store, but it turned out it wasn’t actually sugar free at all.
Well while it didn’t contain traditional cane sugar, it was made from pure Xylitol.
Xylitol is a sugar alcohol. Sugar alcohols come from plant products such as fruits and berries but the carbohydrate in these products is altered through a chemical process.
Sugar alcohols are often used in products labelled, ‘sugar free’, but be careful, they still do impact blood sugar and should be accounted for when calculating insulin.
Due to the fact that sugar alcohols are harder for the body to digest, their impact on blood sugar levels is about half that of regular sugar.
When counting total carbohydrate in products containing sugar alcohols, the sugar alcohol total should be halved and added to the total carbs.
This can be tricky to calculate though, as some nutritional tables don’t list the total sugar alcohol content.
For more information about sugar alcohols visit my earlier post Sweeteners Explained or visit Joslin Diabetes Centre .
More great tips to help you calculate sugar alcohols can be found at Diabetes Education Online.
So ….
For my Diabetic friendly Cherry Cake, I like to use Natvia powder as a icing sugar substitute.
It is made from Stevia, which is a naturally occurring plant and does not impact blood sugars.
It does also contain Erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol, but the great thing about this product is the quantity is featured on the nutritional label so it’s easy to calculate total carbs.
At only 1.98 grams of Erythritol and zero total carbs per serve (2-3 teaspoons), this is approximately 1 gram of total carbs per serve (using the sugar alcohol calculations above).
So give this recipe a try, it’s a great sweet treat with a cup of your favourite tea or coffee.
Diabetic friendly Cherry Cake
Ingredients
- 300 g almond meal
- 35 g semolina
- 3 tsp 100 % pure unsweetened vanilla extract
- 1 1/8 tsp 100% pure Stevia extract powder
- 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 3 eggs (large)
- 1 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 100 g Greek yoghurt (full fat)
- 1/4 cup milk (full fat)
- 1 jar (670 g) Morello pitted cherries (drained)
- 1 1/2 tbs Natvia powder
Instructions
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Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Drain cherries using a sieve and set aside.
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Add the dry ingredients to a bowl including almond meal, semolina, Stevia and baking powder and mix well using a spoon.
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In a separate bowl, add all the wet ingredients including yoghurt, milk, vanilla, almond extract, and mix well using a whisk.
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Combine the wet ingredients in with the dry and whisk together well. Pour the batter into a round, silicone baking tray (approximately 24 cm diameter x 5 cm deep). Tap tray on the bench top gently to smooth out the batter and remove air bubbles.
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Using you fingers, place each cherry onto the top of the cake, leaving the edge free to form a crisp crust.
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Place the tray into the oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes. When cooked, turn off the oven, remove the tray and allow to cool.
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Once cooled, remove the cake from the tray and place onto a serving platter.
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Using a mortar and pestle, grind the Natvia into a fine powder. Dust the top of the cake with the Natvia powder using a fine tea sieve. Pour any remaining powder back into the Natvia container to use at a later time.
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Cut the cake into 12 slice using a serrated knife and serve.
Recipe Notes
diabetic friendly cherry cake
