Head Chef Dan has created this delicious cake as a healthy alternative to your traditional Christmas Fruit Cake! It’s gluten, dairy & refined sugar free with a minimal amount of rapadura sugar, plus natural sweetness from the prunes and currants. It’s a simple, easy to follow recipe that will have everyone coming back for seconds.

Serves approx 8

Ingredients:

• 1 cup prunes, covered with boiling water, stand 15 minutes
• 1 cup cooked quinoa (to cook quinoa, put in salted boiling water for 13 minutes, drain and cool)
• 1 cup grated carrot
• 2 cups almond meal
• 2 tsp xanthan gum
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¾ cup rapadura sugar
• ¾ cup coconut oil
• 3 eggs (for vegan alternative, omit eggs & substitute with 1 cup orange juice blended with 1tbsp lin/flax seed and stand for 5 mins)
• 1 cup walnuts toasted
• ½ cup currants
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• Pinch salt

Method:

1. In a large bowl of an electric mixer beat sugar and coconut oil for 5 minutes
2. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each addition (or orange seed mix)
3. Mash or lightly process prunes
4. Fold almond meal, quinoa, carrot, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt and spices into egg batter
5. Fold in prunes, walnuts and currants
6. Leave batter to stand for 5 minutes
7. Spoon batter into a lined 25 cm tin
8. Bake in a moderate (180c) oven for 40 minutes.

For more healthy Gaia recipes, you can shop our latest Gaia Celebrated Recipes Supplement Cookbook.

Enjoy!