Serves: 8-10

Prep: 30 mins

Cook & Bake: 40 mins

This is the ultimate light,refreshing & festive Summer/Spring-time cake!

Not only is it gluten free (and can be made dairy free too!) It’s also free of refined sugar (and made with Xylitol, a low glycemic sweetener) which makes it much healthier than your average cake!

With its lovely lemony flavour, appetising colour and sturdy sponge cake like consistency this cake is a real crowd pleaser (even with people who are not following the Candida diet!

Can you guess what secret ingredient goes into this cake?! You’ll never guess it!

Cooked potatoes! Yep!

It’s a promising new cake combo, but it might need a few more rounds of testing – to tweak the sweetness. So be warned! Also, the amounts below make a BIG cake. I recommend making a smaller batch first to see if you like it. 

CAKE Ingredients:

• 50 g polenta (boiled corn meal, preferably organic) 
• 175 g ground almonds
• 125 g butter (warmed up gently to soften)
• 175 g Xylitol (get it at the health food shop, Amazon or super markets)
• 3 large eggs
• 250 g mashed potatoes
• Juice of 1 lemon (+ zest of 3 lemons)
• 180 g natural yogurt + extra for serving!
• 1.5 tsp baking paper (aluminium free)

LEMON SYRUP/ DRIZZLE Ingredients:

• 85 Xylitol
• Juice of two lemons (about 5 tbsp)

CAKE Instructions:

1. Chop the potatoes into small cubes and cook in boiling water for about 10 minutes or until cooked through. Drain the water and put the potatoes aside to cool down.
2. In another small saucepan set the cornmeal/ polenta cooking according to instructions on the packet. It’s helpful to prepare the potatoes and polenta the night before and store in the fridge until use.
3. Heat oven to 180 C/ 356 F/ Gas 4.
4. Lightly oil a round cake tin (about 5 cm deep) and line the base with baking parchment.
5. Put all the dry ingredients except for the sweetener into a big mixing bowl.
6. Beat the eggs with the Xylitol in a separate bowl and blend those in with the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.
7. Mash the potatoes with a ricer or fork, and fold in the the potato mash in with the cake mix in the bowl, making sure all potato pieces are finely smoothed out.
8. Finally stirring in the yogurt as well as the butter/ oil with a metal spoon or spatula until combined. Careful not to over-mix. Taste a tiny amount to adjust the sweetness if necessary.
9. Spoon the mix into the tin and spread the top evenly, and bake for 40 minutes or until of golden colour and firm/ springy to the touch (or a skewer can be inserted into the centre and comes out clean).

LEMON SYRUP Instructions:

1. Heat the lemon juice with the remaining Xylitol and a little bit of filtered water (about 75 ml) in a small saucepan over a medium heat until all the sweetener is dissolved. Turn up the heat to high for a few minutes until the liquid has reached the syrup consistency you like.
2. Take the cake out of the oven. Remove the tin and lining and place it on a wire rack.
3. While the cake is cooling down poke little holes all over the cake with a skewer.
4. Slowly spread the lemon syrup evenly over the cake with a spoon or pastry brush, including the edges and sides. It leaves a smooth finish that mostly soaks into the cake.

You could cut down on calories and Candida feeding carbs by keeping the syrup to a minimum or even skipping it completely. If you have a very sweet tooth you might even need more sweetener/syrup if you prefer your cake to be extra sweet, drizzly & moist.

ENJOY!

CANDIDA DIET ADVICE:

This Lemon Drizzle Cake Recipe sadly is not suitable the first few weeks on the Candida diet. You could cut out some sugar by using stevia, but that tastes a bit funny, and the cake would still contain too many carbs due to the mashed potatoes and polenta which the ‘Candida yeasts’ can feed on.

That said, in the maintenance stage of the Candida diet, when your excess Candida levels are under control this is a fantastic cake.

Why?

Because cooled down cooked potatoes are mineral rich, and also contain resistant starch which feeds probiotics in your gut, and therefore boosts your immune system.

USE ORGANIC INGREDIENTS – especially with the polenta, because the regular non organic polenta tends to contain cheap unhealthy GMO corn that flattens the microvilli in your gut. If you have CRT and react to common allergens then use ground almonds instead of polenta to avoid a reaction to the corn in it.

TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS:

I made this cake before and added 5 stevia sachets to make it Candida diet friendly, but that turned out sickly, and when I tried it again, cutting the Xylitol amount down to 85 g it came out not sweet enough. You kind of need a bit of sweetness with this cake to mask the potato flavour! Not to worry though – if the cake isn’t sweet enough you can serve yogurt lightly sweetened with Vanilla Stevia (or honey/ fruit if you are not following a Candida protocol) which works a treat. You could also try leaving out the mashed potato and/ or yogurt for a quicker version of this cake. I tried this too which tasted nice but turned out a bit dry and crumbly, so the amounts need tweaking. 

DAIRY FREE VERSION

You can make an even lighter version of this cake by using 75 g rapeseed oil instead of the butter. You can also easily swap out the yogurt for coconut yogurt (or soy yogurt – if that is your yogurt of choice, I personally believe soy isn’t healthy unless fermented which is an issue for sensitive Candida sufferers, and unfortunately people often display signs of an allergy when eating soy.)

CORN FREE VERSION

You can replace the polenta with ground almond or gluten free all-purpose flour.

NUT FREE VERSION

To make this cake nut free you can simply use the same amount self-raising gluten free all-purpose flour instead of the ground almonds.

ROUGH CONVERSION GRAMS TO CUPS:

• 250 g mashed potato = 1 cup = 9 oz
• 185 g ground almonds = 1.5 cups ground almonds = 6 oz 
• 160 grams soft polenta = 1 cup 

STORAGE

Keeps for a few days if stored in an airtight container in the fridge. This cake also freezes reasonably well.

XYLITOL IS DANGEROUS FOR DOGS

If you have a dog, then you must take great care that your dog does not gobble up any of the cake. Xylitol is not digestible for dog tummies, and therefore poisonous.

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