A sugar free gluten free cake with millet
Millet gives awesome structure to any sugar free cake. It is also gluten free and can easily be used in vegan recipes as well. For long a forgotten grain, it can now be found in many organic shops and supermarkets as well.
Millet: a forgotten gluten free grain?
I sometimes think that millet has a little bit of an image problem. It doesn’t sound or look particularly tasty, it takes longer than bread, rice or pasta to prepare and most people have never heard of it, let alone prepared it.
It’s not long ago that I found out about millet myself and even shorter ago that I realised what it is you can do with it. The first time I ate millet was in Poland which is not strange as consumption of it is high especially in eastern Europe.
Millet: a gluten free grain with many health benefits
Millet is a very healthy, nutritious, tasty and gluten-free alternative for other sources of carbohydrates such as bread or pasta. It contains a lot of B-vitamins and iron and, if prepared well, is also extremely tasty, even without forming part of some cake or burger.
The nice thing about millet is that you can eat it as a source of carbohydrates with your veggies but you can also use it to prepare desserts. After cooking, blending and cooling down, millet will get a pudding like structure and allows for the preparation of sugar free cakes which would otherwise require gelatine or agar.
An easy sugar free cake recipe with only a few ingredients
The top layer of this cake consists of only two main ingredients: millet and coconut milk. Make sure that your coconut milk is thick and creamy. Besides that you will need water for boiling your millet and perhaps some xylitol or erythritol for sweetness. I made the base of this sugar free cake of almonds, pumpkin seeds and dates, mostly because I happened to have those at home. These tastes form an excellent combination but other seeds, dates and dried fruits will also do. Try walnuts with dried figs for example.
This sugar free cake is fairly simple, meaning it can be used as a base for testing alternatives tastes and sugar free recipes.
Coconut cake with millet
Ingredients
Base
- 6 medjool dates or raisins, dried fruit, inca berries
- 2 hands almonds
- 2 hands pumpkin seeds
Cake
- 1 cup millet
- 1 can coconut milk 200 grams - make sure it's thick and creamy
- 2 cups water
- 10 tbsp xylitol
Instructions
Base
- Put all the ingredients for the base in a blender or mixer and mix well until you get a sticky smooth mass that you will easily retain its shape when you knead it. If this doesn't happen, you will probably need to add some dates, raisins or other dried fruit.
- Put the "dough" for the base in a springform pan lined with parchment paper and press until you have a nice, strong base which is evenly distributed over the bottom of your springform pan.
Cake
- Wash and rinse the millet. Bring it to a boil with the coconut milk and water. The millet will need to boil for abou 20 minutes. It's important that all the liquid has evaporated once the millet is done, so you can also add the milk and water a little bit at the time until the millet is cooked and has absorbed all liquids.
- Blend or mix your millet to a smooth mass. Add the amount of xylitol you like to sweeten your cake. You can add some, blend, and taste to see if it's sweet enough. In my experience, when the cake is ready the sweetness will usually come out more than during the blending so make sure not to add too much. It can be nice to blend some of the coconut flakes as well for texture.
- Pour your millet blend onto the base (you shouldn't actually be able to pour it straight out but will have to use your spatula to remove it from your blender) and sprinkle the coconut flakes on top.
- Leave in the fridge for an hour or two to cool down and stiffen. The second day it will taste even better.
You might like this too
