Whole Food Parties

As promised, this post is about catering a kids party using health foods and sugar substitutes. It's perfectly possible to do this. I did it recently; everyone asked for my honey ginger cake recipe, there were zero cookies left after 2 hours, and one Mum even discovered her 4 year old was mad for fresh blueberries.

In addition to the routine dips, rice crackers and veggie sticks, there was a zucchini slice made by Mum, cut into finger sized pieces, and little meatballs made by MIL. The sugar free sweets included a chocolate cheesecake slice, a ginger honey cake, chocolate chunk cookies and the birthday cake. There was also some cut up fruit.

The birthday cake was a butter cake recipe from taste.com.au, into which I substituted gluten free flour and rapadura sugar. I could also have used coconut sugar. I experimented with using my thermomix to turn the rapadura into icing sugar, which worked well texturally speaking, but didn't taste awesome! I'll keep experimenting and give a recipe when I'm satisfied.

The ginger honey cake was a variation of a wonderful recipe I found in Clean Eating magazine. Here's my version:

1.5 cups stone ground spelt flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1.5 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 cup unprocessed honey
1/2 cup egg whites (that was about 4)
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup organic cold pressed peanut oil

Preheat oven to 180

Sift dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.

In a medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients until combined. Pour into dry ingredients and combine, then bake in a sandwich tin about 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. You can also use it for cupcakes.

See? Great recipe, nothing to it!! Also great because the cake actually improves with time in an airtight container, so I was able to bake it 2 days in advance. On the day I cut it in half and filled it with whipped cream. Yum. And low GI.

Gluten free honey sweetened cut out cookies: here. You can use some other flour if you like, I used a stone ground spelt and the recipe needed about a cup and a half rather than one cup. If you cut them into cool shapes, like the birthday kids' newly acquired age, as Nigella suggests in 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', they don't need fancy icing. For a christmassy feel, just add ginger, cloves and nutmeg, poke a hole in them before they go into the oven, then hang them from the tree by a ribbon when they cool. Nawww

The cheesecake slice was a matter of googling 'no bake chocolate cheesecake' and following the recipe for the filling, substituting rapadura for the sugar. I had also bought Well...Naturally's sugar free dark chocolate bars from the supermarket. I infused them into some cream by heating it on the stove and melting the chocolate into it. It chilled in the fridge, then I whipped it and used it in the cheesecake.

I have also had success making a honey cheesecake which is gaps friendly using this recipe by Sally Fallon-Morell. I usually halve it though, to fit a 22cm spring form pan. And it's amazing if you add 200g of pureed strawberries to the mixture! I put in some with the honey, some to swirl through the mixture, and the rest I drizzle over the top. Food of the gods.

The cheesecake crust, however, was 130g of pitted medjool dates, 130g of organic almonds, 20g of raw cacao (or more if you're game), 2 tbsp virgin coconut oil and a splash of vanilla extract. You can also throw in a handful of dessicated coconut. I blitzed this in the thermomix til the almonds were broken into small chunks, but not totally homogeneous with the rest of the mix. Then I pressed it into a biscuit tray and stuck it in the fridge.

The chocolate chunk cookies were easy too, just a matter of substituting rapadura and gluten free flour into this recipe from Joy of Baking.

At a recent brunch party, I served piklets made with stone ground spelt flour, eggs and milk. The topping options were lemon, honey, maple syrup, whipped cream and fresh berries.

I also made little yoghurt cups with mango or berries and maple syrup.

There are so many options and with a little imagination, the run-of-the-mill fairy bread starts to look pretty boring!

At the moment I'm experimenting with ice creams and Christmas cakes, all gaps friendly. I'll hopefully post about those delectable morsels before Christmas!