Sugar Free Banana and Date Cake

This was a late night creation of mine! Had some old bananas to use up and hubby felt like some banana cake so I thought I would try a bit of a different twist making one with no sugar!! I did warn him that there was a high possibility it would not turn out and would not be very sweet. He went back for seconds which says enough really!



In this recipe I have used dates as a natural sweetener. Dates have surprisingly high amount of essential vitamins and minerals, plus have that extra fibre which helps with your gut health. Although still high in natural sugar (fructose and dextrose), dates are a better alternative from raw sugar.

I first made this in a loaf tin as I was not sure how it would work out but the end product you will find light just like a cake. The second time I made it (as the first one just disappeared in our house) I made it in a cake tin and as you can see it worked perfectly!!

Made from simple ingredients that you will have at home this is perfect to make in the evening and have as a warm dessert straight out of the oven and left overs (if there are any) make a great lunch box idea for the next day.

Like with a lot of my recipes I will pre-warn those who are still working on reducing their sugar this is not a sweet cake. You could add some cinnamon to the mixture to help with the taste if you are previously used to a lot of sugar.

Ingredients:

1 egg

60g butter (softened)

2 cups of wholemeal plain flour

3-4 bananas, mashed (ripe works best)

2 tsp of baking powder

½ tsp of baking soda

½ cup of pitted dates, finely chopped

½ C of milk (you may need a touch more to make sure mixture is moist, just add slowly at the end)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC and grease a cake tin.

Cream the butter and egg together in a mixing bowl and add 1 tablespoon of flour (and mix in).

Add in the dates, banana, flour, baking soda and baking powder into the bowl and mix together. Add the milk and gently fold together.

Place the mixture into a pre-greased loaf tin or cake tin and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

You can also jazz this up a bit with a dark chocolate ganache and sprinkles if you are extra creative (or have children that love this part of cake making!).

xx Dr Julie