Love a good chocolate cake but you’re trying to stay away from sugar and looking for a healthier option? I’ve got the solution for you: it’s high protein, high fibre… AND sugar-free, grain-free, gluten-free, but NOT flavour-free.

Hint: it’s made from zucchini and cacao. Zucchini y’know… also called courgette. Sounds funky? You don’t even taste the zucchini in it... Wait till you taste this baby.

No time to watch the 7-minute video? Read the transcript below and grab the recipe below!

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Intro
01:11 When to eat this?
01:51 Recipe card
02:05 Let's bake!
04:34 Which sugar alternatives to use?
06:36 The result!
06:57 What's next?
07:07 Get on my email list

GET KEY PANTRY INGREDIENTS HERE:

○ Almond Flour: https://geni.us/FNg7
○ Coconut Flour: https://geni.us/Fz7ne
○ Cacao Powder: https://geni.us/3CAvxI
○ Good Good Stevia: https://geni.us/xzSHBCQ or here: https://eu.goodgood.net/collections/natural-sweeteners
○ Baking Soda: https://geni.us/dLkULX
○ All my Pantry Essentials here: https://kit.co/enlightenedspoon/pantry-essentials

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○ Vitamix Tamper: https://geni.us/IksjHT
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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, and welcome back to my channel and welcome to my kitchen! If we haven’t met yet, I’m Jaime Tan at Enlightened Spoon. On this channel you’ll get nutrition tips and recipes just like today’s, and other times you’ll get yoga and meditation practices… all tools to help you stress less, yet accomplish more. So hit that Like button and consider subscribing if you want more like this.

“I’m Not a Baker!” Disclaimer ;)

First up - my disclaimer is: I’m not a baker. I like fast, easy recipes that are “throw it all together” and DING! We got something good. This zucchini chocolate cake is more like a chocolate bread - I basically adapted my banana bread recipe to get this… because it’s fast and it’s easy! I’ll link to my banana bread recipe in the description below if you want that too.

When to Eat This?

With something like this that’s high-protein, high-fibre and sugar-free, it makes a great breakfast or midday snack - so make it on the weekend, freeze half of it if you can’t finish it all and you can pop it in the toaster during the week for a fast, good weekday breakfast. Much better than that crappy cereal or granola that you’re eating. Check this video out for what to eat when you’re stressed, and what makes a better breakfast alternative so you don’t end up snacking throughout the day.

I’m all about helping my clients with healthier food alternatives that are gonna support their crazy, busy work days, and a recipe like this is just ONE of many ways.

The Recipe

Why don’t I give you the full recipe right now, and then I’ll talk about each ingredient with any notes on why they’re beneficial:

healthy chocolate cake. zucchini chocolate cake

Ingredients:

3 cups grated zucchini/ courgette (or one medium - large zucchini, grated)
3 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup cacao powder
1.5 cups almond flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup Good Good stevia (or up to 3/4 cup stevia if you like things sweet)
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 175 Celsius or 350 Farenheit.
Line baking tin with baking paper.
Mix zucchini and eggs together, then all other ingredients together until it’s a sticky paste/ dough. Add more or less olive oil to get the right consistency.
Place in baking tin.
Bake for 50 minutes.
Cool for 5 minutes, then enjoy!

GET KEY PANTRY INGREDIENTS HERE:

○ Almond Flour: https://geni.us/FNg7
○ Coconut Flour: https://geni.us/Fz7ne
○ Cacao Powder: https://geni.us/3CAvxI
○ Good Good Stevia: https://eu.goodgood.net/collections/natural-sweeteners
○ Baking Soda: https://geni.us/dLkULX

Bake With Me:

First, let’s start with turning on the oven to 175 degrees celsius or 350 Farenheit.

Then prep the baking pan - I like using baking paper to line it so it’s easier to pop off and clean later. I learned this trick from Jamie Oliver… crumple up the baking paper so it’s easier to work with!

So - as you can tell zucchinis or courgettes are one of the main ingredients and if you have one relatively large one like this guy, it kinda makes about 3 cups of grated zucchini. You don’t need to be mega precise with this one. If your zucchini is older and dryer, you might need to add a little bit more olive oil later. As you can see, the majority of moisture in this recipe is coming from the zucchini. You don’t even taste it when it’s finished, so it’s a great way of hiding veggies to feed the kids more.

3 eggs - adding to the protein content.
If you’re vegan, you can substitute this with a chia or flax-egg. 1 tablespoon chia or flax seeds + 3 tablespoons of water, wait for 5 - 10 minutes substitutes for one regular egg.

¼ cup olive oil - again depending on how dry or wet your zucchini is, you might need to add more or less olive oil later.

½ cup cacao powder. Now do note this is not cocoa powder. Cacao can usually be found in your health food store or Whole Foods - it’s the raw, pure form of the cacao bean, where chocolate comes from, and it’s not been mixed with anything else. Cocoa usually contains other ingredients like milk powder and sugar, and it’s usually made to be a drinking chocolate. So definitely read the ingredients list and ensure you’ve got cacao, not cocoa.

1.5 cups almond flour. This is basically ground up almonds. If you’ve got a mega blender like a Vitamix or Thermomix, you can grind raw almonds into almond flour. Only if you have a mega horsepower blender though, or you might destroy your blender blades. Otherwise you’ll find this in your health food store too.

½ cup of coconut flour. I love this combo of 3 parts almond flour to 1 part coconut flour to substitute regular wheat or white flours. It does make a much denser, compact flour than regular flour, but it’s so much more nutritious for you. This instantly increases the protein profile of whatever you’re making.

¼ cup Good Good Stevia. Now. Let’s pause and talk about regular stevia vs. Good Good stevia.

Personally, I don’t like regular stevia. It’s got that bitter, licorice-y aftertaste, blergh. But this is where Good Good stevia is different! It’s a blend of stevia and erythritol - I can never pronounce that… but it doesn’t have that funky stevia bitter aftertaste, and this substitutes exactly 1:1 with regular sugar - really handy with swapping out recipes. Zero calories, non-blood-sugar spiking. If you’re keto, going into ketogenesis - this is completely keto-friendly.

If stevia and erythritol are not your thing, you can also use monk fruit as a natural zero-calorie, non-blood-sugar spiking substitute, or if you don’t mind consuming natural sugars - there’s raw honey or maple syrup too (which contain sugar and calories - but at least they’re not highly processed). It’s just weighing up what your intention is.

Do you have a favourite non-sugar sweetener? Let me know in the comments below what you use!

Now do note: I don’t like things very sweet… so ¼ cup of stevia might end up being terribly bland for you, especially coz the cacao’s quite bitter. Most recipes call for at least ¾ cups of a sweetener - so you do you! Even if this ends up not being sweet enough, you can always add more sweetener just before serving… y’know add on a drizzle of syrup… it’s always easy to add on more later, but you can’t subtract. So I like starting with less and layering more later if needed.

And then 1 teaspoon baking soda and a pinch of salt.

Optional ingredients: if you like a bit more crunch, you can chop walnuts, almonds or cashews… or you can even add some cacao nibs in there for extra crunch and dark chocolate flavour. If you’ve got sugar-free chocolate chips, feel free to throw those in too!

So basically, blend all the wet ingredients together, and then the dry, and mix it all up.

Bake it for 50 minutes.

When it’s ready, let it cool in the pan for about 5 minutes.

Then remove it from the pan, slice it up and enjoy!

Mmmm…!

Thanks for baking with me! If you enjoyed this video, do give it a like and subscribe, hit that bell too especially if you wanna be notified when my next video drops: I’ve got a holiday gift guide for the burnt-out, exhausted creative person who could do with a little bit of nurturing, cozy vibes… even if that person might be you!

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