Normally when I bake, I use “natural sweeteners”, more often then not maple syrup as it’s an abundant local resource for us. But as I recently mentioned, we are making an effort to keep the sweets at a minimum. Yeast problems in the children was one of the lovely parting gifts of our old moldy house and one of the things that we’ve never been able to totally kick.

The kidlets have been on a baking kick of late, with Iain and Elijah starting to branch out into experimenting with creating there own recipes. Galen’s always keen on helping to bake. What three year old isn’t?? This one shows initiative though. Yesterday I set him up to mash bananas, while I finished up a few things. With the bananas reduced to mush and me still not quite ready to join him, he started gathering other supplies, or so I thought. First he brought me the baking soda, “Mama we use this when we bake??” Answer: “yes and you may go put it on the table.” Which was met with a bright smile and scampering off. The same thing transpired with the baking powder, shortly after which I made it to the table to find that he had utilized a teaspoon from his kitchen set to measure the ingredients into the bananas, before carefully putting them away. After some questioning I determined that he had put in a teaspoon of each. Not really a bad guess for such a little guy!

Lately we’ve been working on recipes for our own fruit sweetened goodies (since I haven’t, as of yet, screwed up the courage to cut fruit out of our already limited diet).

Yesterday we concocted this carob cake and everyone found it sweet-tooth satisfying, so I thought I would share it here. Some of these measurements are approximate since that’s just the kind of baking I tend to do.

Carob Cake

1 C carob powder
1/2 C shredded coconut
3 C rice flour
1 C gluten-free oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

4 eggs or equivalent*
6 mashed bananas
1/4 C olive oil
2 cups rice or almond milk (or other milk of your choice)
1 tsp vanilla

*I use Egg Replacer by Ener-G Foods

Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another. Mix them together and bake at 350 until fork comes out clean. Best served warm, on a cloth napkin, out in the garden.

And if you plan to blog about it, be sure to get a picture before there is only one lousy piece left!