Wednesday 24 December 2008

What to Do with Old Fruit - Spice Cake!

2 cups all purpose flour*
2 cups finely chopped zucchini (or fruit puree)
¼ cups sugar (I usually half this for our own use)
1 cup chopped nuts (or raisins)
½ cup vegetable oil**
1/3 cup water
1 ¼ tsp baking
1 tsp each: salt, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, vanilla
3 eggs (or 3 TBS soy flour and 3 TBS water)

Heat oven to 350 F (175 C). Grease and flour rectangular pan, 13 x 9 x 2 inches (or use muffin tin). Beat all ingredients on low speed, scraping bowl constantly, until blended, about one minute. Beat on medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally, 2 minutes. (I don’t bother with the mixer, just stir it well enough to mix in all the flour). Pour into pan/muffin cups.

Bake until wooden pick inserted in centre comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. 15 servings, 265 calories per serving (with original recipe).

*If using self-rising flour, decrease baking soda to ½ tsp and omit salt.

Any fruit that is overly ripe goes in the freezer until I have time to make a batch of spice cake. I pull out 6-8 pieces and thaw them either over night or in the microwave. Remove the core and/or peel and put into a blender and puree. Just as you can substitute soy flour & water for eggs in most baking recipes,
**you can substitute applesauce for at least half to all the fat in many recipes.

As pureed fruit has many of the same qualities as applesauce, I lower the fat content on this, sometimes to only a TBS or 2. It may be an acquired taste, this low/no fat version, but worth experimenting to see what suits you.

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