Light delight for hot sunny days: raw coconut carrot cake

The last thing you need in those hot summer days is to spend your day cooking and heating up the house. Fresh, light and raw, full of vitamins and water to rehydrate your body. That’s what we should enjoy in the summer.
This cake was actually created in wish to find an alternative to classic cheesecake, which I adore but I wanted something low carb and without any milk products. The texture has nothing to do with it, but the taste gets pretty close.

There’s no need to remind you how healthy carrots are but usually all that peeling and grating just turns you off eating them. For this recipe I’m using a blender or if you like Vitamix. It’s so easy to prepare them that you have no more excuses for not doing it anymore.
Since there’s a lot of lemon juice in the mixture, you have to balance it with something sweet. Applesauce is great for that. It’s pretty low carb and adds some sweetness. That allows you to reduce overall sugar content.

And coconut… it’s a summer thing par default. If you’re not by the sea, it will sure get you there. What I’ve discovered since I started using coconut in my recipes is that it comes in many different forms. Apart from the raw thing, what you can get in the supermarket is coconut chips, coconut flakes and coconut flour. I’m using different coconut flours. The one from Amanprana has more strong taste, so I use it when baking. It goes well especially with chocolate. The one from Vegalife is mild in taste and more neutral, so I use it mostly in raw recipes. Coconut flour is also great because it has really high fiber content. The one from Vegalife has approx. 40 g of fiber per 100 g. It also contains a lot of good fats, but you should keep in mind that there’s approx. 60 g of fat in normal coconut flour or flakes. That means that you don’t have to add that much additional fat to your recipes. I often add coconut flour to my post-workout smoothies. There I prefer using fat reduced coconut flour from Vegalife that has only 17 g of fat per 100 g.

What I like about his recipe is that it can be used in so many ways and always turns out delicious. To find out more go to the upgrades:

• Raw coconut carrot bites
• Raw coconut carrot cupcake
• Coconut carrot mi-cuit

Ingredients:

• 350 g carrot
• 50 g nuts (I used 30 g cashew and 20 g almond)
• 70 g coconut flour
• 30 g coconut flakes
• 100 g applesauce
• lemon peel of 2 organic lemons
• juice of 2,5 lemons
• 3 Tbsp chia seed
• 50 g coconut nectar or agave syrup (I used 20 g agave and 3 Tbsp sucralose)
• 20 g oat flakes
• chocolate, almonds and coconut flakes to garnish

Preparation:

1. Use blender to grind peeled carrots with applesauce until completely smooth.
2. Use grinder or mortar to grind oat flakes, chia seeds and nuts. Grind separately to get flour consistency.
3. In a separate bowl combine carrot mixture whit all the remaining ingredients.
4. Use a cake ring or a cake mold to form a pie. Press well.
5. Let sit in fridge overnight.
6. Sprinkle with chocolate bits, coconut flakes and nuts.