Carrot and Orange Cake

Treat yourself to a Mini Carrot and Orange Cake - a perfect treat and not to many calories.

Occasionally I fancy cake, and when I do, it becomes a bit of an experiment in the kitchen.

First I grab a few ingredients that I think might work together and then I jot down some combinations and work out the calories value of what a serving would be, before I attempt to make it. The reason I do this, is there is nothing worse than making cake only to discover the calories value is way too high for a serving and then you do not feel like you can even enjoy it.

I must admit right here, that these experiments don't always work. When you are testing and trying out new recipes as a food blogger, there are times when recipes fail and of course I will not post anything on here that hasn't passed the taste test of my family.

Creating Slimming friendly cakes can be really hard, because often when trying to keep calories low, they just do not taste very good. I have definitely had more fails with sweet dishes than I have savoury let me tell you.

This Carrot and Orange Cake however was perfect, it hit the spot and tasted good and most importantly the texture was like cake and not eggy like some low calorie cakes can be.

From various experimenting with cake recipes, I have started to got used to whether the cake batter looks right before baking, if it doesn't look right I can almost always tell it needs something else. So those fails are becoming a lot less frequent which is great.

I can't tell you the amount of eggs and ingredients I wasted when I first started my Slimming journey back in 2009 trying to make a low calories cake. It was very disappointing.

So when the craving hit me today, I knew I wanted carrot cake of some description - carrot is a speed food after all and that the led me to the oranges in the fruit bowl. Carrot and Orange Cake just seemed like a perfect combination and so that was exactly what I made.

Sukrin Gold was my choice of sweetener for these Carrot and Orange Cakes, it is natural and has no aftertaste. Feel free to use another sweetener of choice, but obviously these only past the taste test with sukrin, I haven't tried with any other sweeteners.

Next was the flour base. I wasn't making an kind of cake that was just eggs. So I settled on some All Bran I had in the pantry and some coconut flour. Coconut flour, is such a great ingredient for cakes and you need much less of it compared to a regularly flour, because it is so fibrous. I personally don't like it as a flour on it's own, as I find it makes the cake texture a bit odd, but combined with something else, it is perfect.

Test a few different Coconut flours till you find one you like, some can taste a bit strong or can be grainy. Bob Mills, Trader Joes or Sukrin are my preferred brands of coconut flour, some can have a texture that is too grainy or the taste is not comparable. Coconut flour, can be purchased at most grocery stores nowadays or Amazon so it is readily available.

Then once baked and cooled, I just think cake has to have a topping, so I add a bit of vanilla Greek yoghurt mixed with low fat cream cheese and orange zest and it makes a perfect frosting for these Carrot and Orange Cakes. They look so pretty with a little slice of fresh orange.

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Love low calorie cakes and would like some others to try? Check out these recipes:

• Fruit Pizza
• Lemon Poppy Seed Mug Cake
• Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
• Mini Banana Raisin Loaf
• Best Ever Carrot Cake
• Bread and Butter Pudding
• Sultana Weetabix Cake
• Jam and Coconut Sponge Cake
• Chocolate Scan Bran Cake
• Pineapple and Coconut Weetabix Cake
• Lemon Drizzle Muffins
• Mini Carrot Cake Bites
• Raspberry and Lemon Sponge Cake
• Toffee Banana Chocolate Weetabix Cake
• Squidgy Chocolate Brownie Cake
• Chocolate Scan Bran Cake

and don't forget to check out my FULL RECIPE INDEX with over 500+ delicious Slimming Recipes

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