Sugar-free Berry Dream Cake

In case you’re stuck in a recipe rut here’s a dream cake for you to bake!

“Have you ever baked without sugar? I tried this beautiful, no effort, sugar-free cake topped with berries and cream, and was amazed; nobody noticed that it was sugar-free until I told them! It’s still sweet, thanks to the dates in the dough.”
– Laura Matteucci, cooking blogger, thecookingglobetrotter.com

Serves 12

Ingredients

• 100g Medjool dates, pitted and chopped
• 125g room-temperature butter
• 225g flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 125ml milk
• 50ml juice of your choice (Laura uses blackberry juice, but you can also use orange or whatever you have at home)
• 250g summer berries
• 1 organic lime
• 1 handful sliced almonds (about 15g)
• 250g Quark or Topfen (a fresh cheese from German-speaking regions; if it’s not available near you, use mascarpone or ricotta, or a fresh, mild cream cheese instead)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius.
2. Line a 20×25 baking tin with baking paper. Laura’s tip: “To make the baking paper more malleable and fit into any baking tin, I crumble it in a ball and put it under running water until wet; then, I squeeze the water out and open it up again. This makes it easy to handle.”)
3. Whisk the butter, flour, baking powder, vanilla extract, eggs, milk and chopped dates together to form a creamy dough.
4. Pour into baking form and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
5. Let it cool (out of the form if possible).
6. Bring your juice to a boil in a small pan; then add 100g of the berries, and turn off the heat.
7. Whisk the quark until creamy (this will take a while). If you’re using mascarpone, no need to whisk it. If you’re using ricotta, be a bit careful. The goal is to make a cream that can spread easily onto the cake.
8. Add another 100g of berries to your cheese cream and mix well (it’s okay to destroy the berries in the process, as they’ll make the cream moist). If the cream is too tangy, add some rice syrup or maple syrup.
9. Once the cake has cooled down, pour on the cheese-berry cream and spread it out nicely.
10. Pour the berry-juice mixture over the cream.
11. Grate some lime zest directly over the cake.
12. Decorate with sliced almonds and the remaining berries, then enjoy!

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This article first appeared in the February 2019 edition of Expat Living. You can purchase a copy or subscribe so you never miss an issue!