Guilt-Free Cinnamon Apple Cake

This is one of the oldest twimii recipes that I still make a lot.

I first called this Apple Banana Cake but you don’t actually taste the banana it’s just used for the fat and sugar element in the cake batter so I ended up calling it the Apple Cinnamon Cake and now I just decided Cinnamon Apple Cake sounds better. So that’s what it’s called now.

I came up with my banana apple cake while I was on a self-imposed detox. I couldn’t have any refined sugar or wheat or dairy – the usual suspects. I was looking for some kind of sweet treat and I wondered if I could make some sort of cake using ground almonds for the flour and bananas for the fat and sugar. This is the easiest thing in the world to make – a child could make it very easily. And if you want to make a vegan version it’s still quite good without the egg.

OK that last sentence is not really correct. I did make vegan versions of it but at times that I was doing detoxes and as the sweetness of this was exactly what I was craving then I didn’t really notice how awful the texture is without the egg. It doesn’t really work and it takes ages to bake. If you are looking for a vegan baked-fruit dish that is really simple and contains no refined sugar then grease an oven dish with some sunflower or coconut oil, add some plums and apricots or peaches or a mixture of fruits like that, and top with a mix of mashed banana and unsweetened desiccated coconut. Just make sure that fruit you’re using is properly sweet. When you bake fruit normally with sugar you usually want them ever so slightly under-ripe – for this they must be sweet.

It may not look the best, but personally I love this. It’s full of protein, minerals and good fat. And it’s one of those comfortingly stodgy kind of treats – though not overly sweet.

This tastes great when you’re following a diet that doesn’t include much or any refined sugar. Really I love this when I’m doing that. But if I want a healthy treat and I have been eating normally – which unfortunately includes way too much sugar – then the vegan soft fruit cookies are what I make. Raisins or sultanas contain a lot more sugar than fresh fruit – so that’s also something you could add to the cake batter here if you want to make it sweeter but you don’t want to add refined sugar.

I have been known to add some maple syrup over it too – which is good but kind of defeats the whole purpose of the thing.