Monday, January 16, 2012

Breakfast week day 1: Breakfast cake: Sugar-free vegan quinoa and cornmeal berry cake

Breakfast: Breakfast cake: quinoa and cornmeal berry cake with a blueberry reduction

Lunch: Orzo salad with veggies

Dinner: Roasted beet, carrot, ginger and coconut milk soup


This week on the Everyday Veggie I'm going to be showing you some new and healthy breakfast ideas! It's very easy to get stuck in a rut but this isn't a particularly good idea - variety is not only the spice of life but it helps you to get all the different goodies you need over one week! We'll explore some new ideas this week as well as shaking up a couple of old classics.

This recipe was born of my desire to basically eat cake for breakfast. Now, we've all done it - whether it was birthday when we were 6 or a Boxing Day breakfast of leftover Christmas cake 3 weeks ago - but we all know that it generally isn't a good idea. Not only does it usually lead to snacking on sugary things all day long, but a sugar injection that extreme in the morning leaves your metabolism playing catch up all day. Not good.

This cake, however, is packed with healthy goodies. With no sugar, no eggs, no butter, margarine or oil and no frosting, this cake gets its hint of sweetness from unsweetened applesauce and berries, and is largely made up of that beautiful treat, quinoa. The resulting balance is somewhere between sweet and savoury, and when coupled with a simple blueberry reduction is the absolutely perfect meal to wake up to on a snowy Monday morning.

Set some time aside on Sunday night to make this and you'll be thanking yourself all week!

You'll need:
(Makes 1 cake)
2 cups cooked quinoa
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup vanilla almond milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup wholewheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 cup ground flax
1 cup raspberries
1 cup blueberries

Method:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius and grease a cake pan
Pour the almond milk and vinegar together in a bowl, stir, and set aside for 5 minutes
Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon in a bowl and stir in the ground flax and cornmeal
Add the applesauce to the almond milk mixture
Stir the almond milk mixture into the flour mixture
Gently stir in the quinoa, raspberries and blueberries til just combined, then pour into the cake pan
Bake for 75-90 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean - the insides should feel slightly undercooked when you remove it from the oven
Sit the cake and allow it to cool for 30 minutes. Remove it from the pan and put it straight in the fridge until needed. The insides will firm up when cooled and become the perfect consistency
Keep in the fridge and enjoy all week!

You can eat this cake hot or cold, though my preference is cold with a warm fruit sauce on it. The quinoa in this is so good for you that's its hard to overstate; not only is it a whole protein, but it also contains iron, magnesium and dietary fiber, all great for keeping you regular and at your best. This really is a "cake" that comes guilt-free!

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