Recipe – Healthy Earl Grey Grape Cake

Now that everyone is talking about healthy eating, I am also starting to make healthy cakes. If you realized, I have stopped baking for quite a while. Not because I lost interest already, but whenever I think of the amount of butter and sugar I add into a cake, it kinda scares me and I would constantly remind my Grandpa not to eat too much.

So when Derrick bought me a recipe book “大口吃也不怕胖：讓你年輕10歲的營養美味磅蛋糕” as a Christmas present, I thought it would be a perfect reason to bake a cake. But the next problem I had was, swallowing and understanding the recipe in Chinese. Even though I usually converse and write in Chinese, but having to grasp the baking terms in Chinese is definitely not easy. So after spending 30minutes translating, I decided to bake a HEALTHY EARLY GREY GRAPE CAKE!

The author of the recipe book is a very lovely Japanese lady who follows a macrobiotic diet. The term macrobiotic is taken from the Greeks. The term macrobiotic means “long life”. The basis for a macrobiotic diet is whole grains, combined with other unprocessed fruits, vegetables and other whole foods.

The good thing about having a macrobiotic diet is that, whole grains, fruits and vegetables makes this a very high fiber diet. They are rich in many nutrients. However, the diet is quite limited and may be difficult to stick to if you crave variety. And also, some of the ingredients may not be readily available in bakery supplies shop.

Healthy Earl Grey Grape Cake
for two 15×6 baking trays

Ingredients A:
100g cake flour
100g wholemeal flour
60g almond flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp early grey tea leaves, pounded into small pieces
a pinch of salt

Ingredients B:
6 tbsp maple syrup
4 tbsp grapeseed oil
100ml soya milk

Ingredients C: 
100g grapes (I did 50g red and 50g green, you can fine tune the proportions according to your liking!)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven at 180 degree celsius for 15 minutes.
2. Sieve the cake flour and mix all the Ingredients A together.
3. Mix all the Ingredients B together.
4. Fold in Mixture A to Mixture B.
5. Add in grapes.
6. Pour the mixture equally into each baking tray and bake for 40 minutes or until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake come out clean.

** Cake keeps at room temperature up to 3 days and can be put in the fridge up to 5 days. Upon consumption, just microwave it for 2-3 minutes.

I followed the steps very closely and the end result is somewhat similar to bread, perhaps because I used wholemeal flour. It is not like a soft pound cake. And the essential of eating this macrobiotic cake is to eat slowly and chewing food thoroughly, as well as avoiding overeating. It provides a good afternoon tea alternative, especially when you pair it with some tea. And now I don’t feel so guilty when my Grandpa eats my cake. If you are wondering, I did not overbake the cake. It looks tough and dry on the outside but actually it tasted okay. Perhaps next time I will try with some other ingredients and steam it instead of bake!