Getting That Festive Feeling: Gluten Free Christmas Cake

Baking the Christmas cake is something I look forward to every year. Its fun choosing the fruit combination, I always stick to the basics but try to have something a little different each time. The fruit is then soaked overnight in brandy before being baked into the dark spicy cake mix the following day. Whereupon more brandy is added and the baked cake is wrapped up tight and squirreled away to mature for a few weeks before being marzipaned and iced in the run up to Christmas. Having to wait before eating it fills me with excited anticipation, and I’m sure it makes it tastes better when I finally get to taste it on Christmas Day. There is just something so festive and traditional about its preparation and the aromas that waft through the house on baking that it can’t help but put me in a good mood.

I normally try to get the cake baked by mid November so it has lots of time to mature, but I have only just got round to it this year – where have the days gone?? The arrival of a light scattering of snow at the end of last week meant staying indoors with the Christmas cake mix was a far cosier prospect than venturing outside, so now we have Christmas cake!

This year the Christmas cake is, of course, going to be gluten free. However, this does not offer any problems as Christmas cake is basically lots of fruit stuck together with a bit of cake mix, rather than a cake containing fruit. Its got so much fruit that you don’t need to worry about it not rising or being fluffy enough as this is not that sort of cake. You could even replace the all the flour with ground almonds and still end up with a delicious cake.

For my cake I decided to use a combination of buckwheat flour and brown rice flour. I love the flavour of buckwheat and the brown rice has a nice fine texture, plus a bit of hidden fibre never hurt anyone. If you want to make a non GF cake then just add the same amount of plain flour in place of the rice and buckwheat flours. If you do want to make this cake gluten free then be sure to check your ingredients carefully. I’ve used fresh citrus zest in place of candied peel as I prefer it, but I did look at the back of the packet and was surprised to see that they’d added wheat flour to try and prevent the little peel pieces from sticking together. Why they bother when it’s covered in sticky syrup anyway I don’t know, but be sure to check!

I love the colours of this fruit mix. It’s so cheering to cut into a slice of the dark cake and see the glossy reds, browns and oranges of the dried fruits peeping out. After the fruits have been soaking in brandy they smell heavenly, all sweet, citrusy and alcoholic. However, nothing surpasses the aroma that wafts from the oven while the cake is baking, hot warm spices and sticky dark treacle – ahh bliss.

Feel free to adapt the fruit and soaking liquid below to suit your own preferences or whatever you have on hand. I added some dried apple this time but in the past I’ve used dried cranberries, figs and prunes. Experiment and have fun!

Click below to see my Christmas cakes from Christmases past (Look back through November and December from 2 years ago for a complete set-by-step guide to creating a Christmas cake.
I’ll do another post nearer Christmas and show you this years design!

3 years ago – Poinsettia
2 years a go – Holly Wreath
1 year ago – Gingerbread House

Gluten Free Christmas Cake

Fruit Soaking Mix
170g raisins
170g sultanas
50g dried apricots
50g glace cherries
35g dried apple rings
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of ½ orange
50ml brandy

Cake Mix
100g buckwheat flour
80g brown rice flour
20g ground almonds
120g light muscovado sugar
120g soft butter
1 tsp mixed spice
25g black treacle
2 eggs

Feeding
20ml Brandy

Method
Place the raisins and sultanas into a bowl. Chop the cherries into quarters and add to the bowl. Chop the apricots and dried apple into pieces the size of the sultanas and add to the bowl.
Add the zest of the lemon and orange.
Drizzle over the Brandy and stir to coat. Cover with cling film and leave for at least 24 hours in a cool place to allow the fruit to plump up and absorb the Brandy.

To make the cake

Lightly grease a 6.5inch/17cm deep round spring form tin. Grease the tin well and line the base greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 140C.
Make sure your butter is soft, then weigh all the cake ingredients, expect the pre soaked fruit into a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until well combined.
Add the pre soaked fruit, including any remaining juices and fold together using a spatula.
Spread the mix into the tin, creating a dip in the middle to allow for doming in the oven. Press down gently.
Bake in the oven for 2hours 10minutes until browned and quite firm to the touch.
Allow to cool in the tin for 1 hour before pricking the surface of the cake and drizzling over 20ml of Brandy. Cover the cake and leave to cool in the tin before unmolding. Leave the greaseproof paper on the base and wrap the cake tightly in clingfilm and leave to mature for at least two weeks. Feed again with another 15ml of Brandy one week later. A week before Christmas, trim the top of the cake into a level surface and brush with a little more brandy before adding a layer of marzipan and covering in fondant and decorating. Also tastes great un-iced if desired.
Makes 1 x 6.5inch/17cm cake

Gluten Free Muesli

It was really quite ridiculous how happy I felt after creating this batch of muesli. In the first few weeks of my new diet, the thing I missed the most, more so than bread, was my cereals, muesli and porridge*(see note at end). Breakfast has long been my favourite meal of the day and I loved porridge, bran flakes, granola, weetabix, mini shredded wheats, muesli and the occasional sugar laden novelty cereal so much than I often used to snack on it straight from the box. To suddenly have to ban them all from my cupboards was very hard and for a few weeks I mourned their absence and was at a loss of what to eat in their place. However, as I have fast been learning a gluten free diet is not so much about denying yourself certain foods, but finding suitable substitutions.

After a bit of internet searching I discovered a sort of wholesome/natural foods warehouse called (ironically) Daily Bread Co-Operative, which said they specialised in foods for special diets. It was a bit of a trek away but I was only too eager to make the trip if it meant browsing food isles could become enjoyable again.

It turned out to be a fantastic place filled with all sorts of fruits, nuts, seeds and grains, including some I had never seen before but were gluten free! Buckwheat puffs anyone? I returned home with two big bags full of suitable breakfast grains and immediately set about creating a muesli mix.

Here are the things I bought and used to make my muesli mix for anyone who’s interested.
Buckwheat puffs – Look like tiny mottled popcorn puffs with a similar texture. They have a toasted nutty flavour
Millet puffs – Tiny beads of popcorn like puffs. Sweet and mellow flavour
Brown rice flakes – Very thin, crisp and brittle flakes. Slightly tacky and chewy when wet but add great crispness when mixed with other things
Millet – Tiny balls of millet, crisp and crunchy
Millet flakes – Similar to very finely ground oats. Quite powdery but add a nice creaminess when mixed with other things
Linseeds/Flaxseeds – Don’t really add flavour but packed with essential fatty acids and omega 3 – must be crushed before eating to release their nutritious oils
Dried apple rings – Soft, slightly chewy and sweet with a great apple flavour
Dried apricots – Very sweet, sticky and incredibly fruity. Great flavour
Raisins – We all know what raisins taste like!

Eating my first bowlful was such an enjoyable experience. It contained the varied combination of sweet, nutty, crisp, crunchy and chewy that I had been craving. Some of the grains were a little bitter on their own, but when eaten with yoghurt and a drizzle of honey it was delicious!

I decided to make just a small batch at first as this would allow me to create a new mix each week to keep things interesting. The amounts below may seem very small but the puffed grains are incredibly light meaning you get a lot of them for your weight. I might try baking some with honey and nuts next time to create more of a granola style mix. Hurrah for exciting cereal again - the worlds my buckwheat puff!

Gluten Free Muesli

Ingredients
30g buckwheat puffs
20g millet puffs
30g brown rice flakes
30g millet
40g millet flakes
40g dried apple
50g raisins
30g dried apricots
50g ground linseed/flaxseed (keep separate and sprinkle over each serving before eating)

Method
Weight out all the flakes, grains and puffs and toss together in an airtight container. Finely chop and dried apple and apricots until they are the same size as the raisins. Mix in all the fruit to the grains.
Grind the linseed in a small food processor until the seeds are cracked and broken (don’t overdo it or it will start to form a mushy paste). Store the crushed linseed in a separate container.
Serve with sliced fresh fruit, milk or yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. Sprinkle a teaspoonful of the crushed linseeds over your bowl of muesli before eating. (It falls to the bottom if mixed with everything else)
Makes enough for 4-6 servings

* Note about oats
Some people may wonder why I can’t have porridge on my gluten free diet. It is true that oats are gluten free but many oats are milled using the same machines as wheat, meaning there is a high risk they have been contaminated with gluten making them unsafe to eat. You can buy oats that are guaranteed to be milled away from gluten grains and these are often labelled as ‘pure oats.’ However, until my gut has fully recovered and I’m back to full health I have been advised to avoid all oat products as some coealics are unable to tolerate the protein in oats as well as gluten proteins so I have to avoid them for now too. (I hope I’m not one of these people and that I can eat oats in the future!)

Gluten Free Apple & Blackberry Buckwheat Crumble

I want to start by thanking everyone for all their kind comments and words of encouragement during the past week. All the blogs, recipes, hints and tips you have given me will be enough to keep me busy in the kitchen for a very long time and I’ve got lots of new ideas and ingredients to experiment with.

A couple of nights ago a good friend of mine invited me and a group of our friends round for dinner. We all get together about once a month for an informal dinner and chat which is a great way of keeping up to date with everyone’s latest news. This was going to be the first time I had seen any of them since being diagnosed as coeliac and I was a little unsure how they would take it. The meal had been planned for some time I felt rather bad about having to phone the host up and explain I wouldn’t be able to eat the pasta dish she was planning. However, she was really supportive and didn’t mind in the slightest and quickly changed the menu to a delicious vegetable curry with rice. As a thank you I told her I’d bring a dessert choice.

We had a small pile of cooking apples sitting on the counter from my grandmothers garden as well as some late blackberries so an apple and blackberry themed dessert was the obvious choice. I decided to turn them into a crumble as I felt sure I would be able to make a suitable crumble topping using my new range of gluten free flours. I decided to use primarily buckwheat (my new favourite) as I thought its natural sweetness and nutty flavour would go well with the fruit and a little potato and rice flour for their crumbliness. I also added some ground almonds for flavour and to help mask any strange flavours that I thought the flours might produce – I’m happy to say there were no strange flavours.

I decided to puree the blackberries and use just their juice in the base of the crumble, rather than add the whole berries. I love the flavour and colour blackberries give but I know some people don’t enjoy their seeds so I though this would be a good compromise. I also stewed most of the apple beforehand and then stirred through some raw apple at the end for texture. The blackberry puree bubbled up through the apple during cooking and dyed all the fruit a gorgeous bright shade of purple which made it look so inviting when you broke through the golden crumble topping.

I’m please to say that everyone loved the crumble and said if they hadn’t been told, they wouldn’t have known it was gluten free – hurrah! If you really thought about it there was a slightly sandy texture from the rice flour but when mixed with the fruit this was not noticeable. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I used the rest of the fruit to make another crumble the following day which I enjoyed with my family after Sunday dinner last night.

Gluten Free Apple & Blackberry Buckwheat Crumble

Ingredients
450g cooking apples
150g eating apples
150g blackberries
50g caster sugar

Buckwheat Crumble
100g buckwheat flour
30g potato flour
20g rice or maize flour
40g ground almonds
70g butter
50g caster sugar
1 tbsp water

Method – Crumble Topping

Measure out the flours, ground almonds and sugar into a bowl. Cut the butter into small cubes, add to the flour and rub it through the flour using the tips of your fingers. Lift the flour up as you rub the butter in, letting it fall back into the bowl. Continue until you have no large lumps of butter left and the mix resembles fine bread crumbs. Sprinkle over the water and squeeze the mix together so you get a few bigger clumps. Set aside for later.

Fruit

Preheat the oven to 190C.
Peel, core and roughly dice the cooking apples. Place into a large pan, cover the base of the pan with 1cm of water and heat until the mixture begins to bubble. Allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes until the apple is mushy and soft. Peel, core and roughly dice the eating apple and stir through the stewed apple. Set aside.
Meanwhile, place the blackberries into a separate small pan and add enough water to cover the base of the pan. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes until the berries are beginning to break down and release their juices. Remove from the heat and transfer the blackberries into a sieve set over a small bowl to catch the juices. Crush the blackberries with the back of a spoon, pressing all the juice through the sieve and into the bowl below. Continue until you have only the seeds left behind. Discard these.

Assemble
Pour the blackberry puree into the base of a pie or pudding dish. Spoon the apple mixture over the top and scatter over the crumble topping.
Bake in the preheated oven (190C) for 25-30 minutes until the top is golden in colour and crisp.
Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes before serving. The blackberry puree should have bubbled up through the apple and stained it all a gorgeous shade of purple.
Serve with custard, cream or ice cream if desired. Also tastes great cold.

Blackberry & Lime Cake with Walnut Streusel Topping

I made this cake a couple of weeks ago for my grandads birthday. I had just been blackberrying and so was primed with lots of fresh berries to use. I decided to pair them with some lime zest as I think this helps bring out the berries natural zing and sweetness. The amount of lime zest stated in the recipe may seem small, but it’s amazing how much flavour this small amount provides, it really was quite apparent in the finished cake.

It’s an unusual cake in that when it comes to mixing in the flour you are actually after a slightly lumpy batter as over mixing it will result in a dense heavy cake. In this respect it’s more like a muffin mix where the little lumps of flour help give the crumb its airy texture and springiness. My grandad is also diabetic (diet controlled) so I liked the fact that the recipe didn’t contain too much sugar and that it made use of a nutty streusel topping instead of a buttercream or frosting.

The streusel topping bakes into a delicious crispy crumbly topping and the added nuts get a gentle toasting making them even more flavoursome and nutty. The cake itself was studded with the blackberries which were full of flavour and added little pockets of bright purple juiciness. It was delicious when served slightly warm – we even reheated slices the next day in the microwave, the perfect accompaniment to a cup of afternoon tea.

Blackberry & Lime Cake with Walnut Streusel Topping

(Recipe adapted from Delia Smith)

Cake

250g blackberries
Zest of ½ lime
275g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
75g caster sugar
170ml milk
110g butter

Streusel

75g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
25g butter
50g Demerara sugar
50g walnuts
1 tbsp water

Method – Streusel Topping

Place the flour, baking powder and butter into a bowl. Use the tips of your fingers to rub the butter into the flour, lifting it up and letting the mix fall back into the bowl. Continue until you have no large lumps of butter left and the flour is starting to look like crumbs.
Chop the walnuts into small chunks and mix through the flour mixture along with the sugar. Add the water and rub briefly so the mix forms little into little clumps. Set aside until required.

Blackberry Lime Cake

Preheat the oven to 190C. Grease a deep 8inch springform tin and line the base with baking paper.
Whisk the eggs, sugar and milk together until combined and just starting to look foamy. Melt the butter until liquid, then pour into the egg mix and briefly whisk again.
Sift the flour and baking powder over the top and add the salt and lime zest. Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon in a folding motion until no flour streaks remain – it should look lumpy – this is ok – don’t try and beat them out!
Add the blackberries and gently fold them in, don’t mix too much or they will break down, but a few purple streaks are quite pretty.
Pour the cake batter into the tin and scatter over the streusel topping.
Bake in the oven for 1 hour until the top is deep golden brown and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin for 30 minutes before removing from the tin and leaving to cool to room temperature.
Delicious served still warm with cream or crème fraiche
Serves 8-10

The Cake Slice September 2010: Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

This cake was particularly special this month as not only did it feature apples – one of my all time favourite foods, but it is also the last cake that The Cake Slice group is baking from our currant cake book - Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott. We have been baking from this book for the past year which means next month we will start baking from an exciting new cake book!! As a result we are now accepting new members, so if you are interested in joining The Cake Slice and baking with us then please see the end of this post for details.

Anyway, back to this month’s apple cake. This cake turned out to be the best cake we have made all year – it was divine, the perfect cake to end with on a high note. It consists of a thick glossy batter that it liberally studded with chunks of fresh apple and walnuts which add a wonderful moistness and texture. A brown sugar fudge-like glaze is then poured over the still hot cake and left to absorb and set into a delicate toffee flavoured sugary crust. The cake is then served in generous squares straight from the pan – delicious!

I was tempted to add some cinnamon to the mix as I always feel this should be the natural accompaniment to anything containing apples, but I managed to restrain myself and I’m glad I did. Although the ingredients look fairly simple, this allowed the nuts and apples to really shine through and be the star flavours. I used fresh apples, picked from a friends garden. They were quite sharp and tangy when raw but mellow and softened beautifully in this cake and were the perfect contrast to the sweet sugary topping. I was also surprised at how much flavour the walnuts contributed and it was wonderful to suddenly bite down on a little nugget of one, hidden amongst the light cake and squishy apple pieces.

The batter looks a little strange in its raw state, it was a little gloopy and sticky and reminded me of a choux pastry batter. I was a little dubious it would work but it baked into a lovely textured moist cake. Some of the other bakers had said it was a little oily so I replaced some of the oil stated below with water and this worked well and I didn’t find the cake greasy at all. I also reduced the sugar quite considerably as I didn’t want it too sweet, especially as it had the sweet sugar glaze on top. Even then I still found the cake sweet but the sharp apples balanced it out nicely.

I can’t recommend this cake enough, everyone who tasted it loved it and if you’re an apple fan then I’m sure you’d love it too. Click to see our blogroll for everyone else’s apple cakes.

Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

(Recipe from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott)

Fresh Apple Cake

360g plain flour

450g caster sugar (I used 300g)

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

330ml vegetable oil (I used 250ml oil & 80ml water)

2 tsp vanilla extract

450g finely chopped, peeled & cored apples (5-6 apples)

115g coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts

Brown Sugar Glaze

225g light brown sugar

75g butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp evaporated or regular milk

Method – Fresh Apple Cake

Heat the oven to 180C. Grease a 13 x 9 inch pan or two 8-9 inch cake pans. (I used a 13x7 inch pan and got a deeper cake.)

In a medium bowl combine the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Stir with a fork to mix everything together well.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a mixer at low speed until pale yellow and foamy. Add the oil and vanilla and beat well. Stir in the flour mixture with a wooden spoon and continue stirring the batter just until the flour disappears. Add the apples and nuts, stir to mix them into the batter until fairly uniform. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the cake is golden brown, springs back when touched lightly near the centre and is beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan. Place the cake (still in the pans) on a wire rack and spoon over the glaze while still hot.

Method - Brown Sugar Glaze

Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a gentle boil. Then cook for 3-5 minutes.

To Finish

Spoon the hot glaze all over the hot-from-the-oven cake. Let the glazed cake cool completely before serving straight from the pan.

Makes one 13x9inch sheet cake or two 8-9inch round cakes

New Cake Slice Members: Now onto the exciting bit! If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice group and baking delicious cakes with us for the next year than please email me your name, blog name and blog URL to ‘appleandspice[AT]hotmail.co.uk’ with ‘Cake Slice Member’ as the subject and I will contact you with the details of how to join us! You have until October 20^th to sign up.

Spiced Apple & Plum Butter

Apples and plums are at the height of their season and the trees roundabouts are bowing under the weight of their fruit. We have a few tiny apples trees in our garden and some of our friends have trees too and as a result I ended up with a glut of apples, far too many eat and so I decided to turn some into jam.

While hunting for recipes I came across several recipes for a preserve called apple butter. I have heard of this before, but never tasted it. It turned out to be a smooth apple puree which is thick – the texture of softened butter – and often spiced with cinnamon and cloves, which many of you will know I absolutely adore. This seemed the perfect way to make use of the apples.

I was initially a little apprehensive about the recipe as I had read on several blogs that it can be quite time consuming and difficult to make. The process involves stewing the chopped apples, skin, core, pips and all until mushy and then pushing the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the ‘unwanted bits’ which results in a thick apple puree. Sugar and spices are then added and the mix is stirred constantly over the heat until thick.

This did indeed sound rather time consuming but it turned out to be remarkably easy and straight forward. I think it was actually easier than regular jam making, as not having to peel and core all the apples saved a lot of time and there was no tricky setting test to perform on the jam as its obvious once the puree has got thick enough to spread.

The resulting butter was gorgeous! It was smooth and thick and nicely spiced with the apples favourite accompanying spices of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. As I also had a large bag of plums from another fruit foraging trip I substituted a quarter of the weight of apples called for with plums. This along with the russet red skins of the apples produced a lovely pinkish blush colour of the puree.

As its called butter I had my first bite of it spread thickly on bread and for an apple lover it tasted delicious and absolutely jam packed with fresh apple flavour. I’ve since used it on top of porridge, swirled in yoghurt and as a filling for a cake. My meat eating family have also had it with their Sunday roast pork and declared it ‘fabulous.’

My only slightly negative comment is that a little apple vinegar is called for in the recipe. This helps preserve the apple butter but means a slight vinegary taste is noticeable if eaten straight away – only very very slight though. This didn’t bother me but I’ve found that this mellows out and disappears if you store it for a while – just like when making chutney. If you too have a glut of apples or fancy something a bit different to marmalade on your toast in the mornings then I highly recommend you whip up a batch of this.

Spiced Apple & Plum Butter

Ingredients
1.5kg apples – skin, core and all
500g plums
450ml water
225ml apple cider vinegar
400-500g caster sugar
2tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground clove
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method
Remove the stones from the plums and place into a large saucepan. Roughly dice the apples, leaving the skin, core and pips in. Place into the pan with the plums and pour over the water and vinegar.
Bring to the boil and allow to bubble for 20 minutes until the fruit is very soft and starting to break down.
Place a sieve over a large bowl and spoon in some of the fruit mush. Use a ladel to push and press the fruit through the sieve, catching the thick puree in the bowl below. The skin and pips will be left behind in the sieve – discard these before adding the next batch of fruit.
Weigh your finished puree and add 150g caster sugar per 500g of fruit puree. (I had 1.5kg fruit puree, so added 450g sugar).
Place 5-6 jars and their lids into a cool oven and set the temperature to 120C. Allow the jars to heat up with the oven and then sit for at least 10 minutes in the heat before using – this sterilises them and will prevent them from shattering when you add the hot apple butter later on.
Return the puree to the pan, add the sugar and spices and heat, stirring constantly for about 30-40 minutes. Don’t neglect to stir or it will start spitting at you or stick and burn to the base of the pan.
Once the puree has thickened to a spreadable consistency, remove from the heat.
Remove the hot jars from the oven and divide the hot apple butter between the jars. Screw the lids on while the contents are still hot, wearing rubber gloves to protect your hands. (Screwing the lids on while the contents are still hot will create a vacuum inside the jar as it cools down. This will seal the jars and mean they can be stored without spoiling for several months).
Allow to cool on the side before storing in a cool dark place until required. Once opened, store in the fridge.
Makes 5-6 jars

Note: You can of course use all apple in place of the apple & plum combo above

Banana & Caramel Cheeseless Yoghurt Cheesecake

This cheeseless cheesecake was a bit of an experiment. I was eating some very thick Total Greek yoghurt and thinking how it was so lusciously thick and creamy that it was almost the texture of cream cheese. I then began to wonder whether it could be used in a recipe in place of cream cheese and naturally my first through for a cream cheese rich recipe was cheesecake.

I decided that if I was going to experiment with a cheeseless cheesecake then I didn’t want it to be your run of the mill cheesecake. I had three ripe bananas sitting on the side so decided to incorporate them into the cheesecake along with some dulce de leche caramel to make a sort of banoffee style dessert. I spread the caramel on top of the biscuit base, topped this off with slices of banana and then poured over the yoghurty topping which I’d flavoured with lots of mashed banana and a little cinnamon and finally a few more blobs of caramel.

The Greek yoghurt behaved well in the mixing of the dessert and I put it into the oven with hopes that it would bake and set, although I admit I was a little doubtful it wouldn’t collapse and try and seep out the tin or just remain liquid. However, I needn’t have worried as it baked perfectly. I took it out when it was lightly golden and puffy around the edges and still retained a gentle wobble in the centre. It levelled off into a perfectly smooth surface as it cooled. I loved how the extra little blobs of caramel were peeping out here and there, I could hardly wait for its overnight chill in the fridge before tasting it.

I can safely say the taste was worth the wait. It cut into perfect creamy slices and had a wonderful texture, creamy and thick as with all cheesecakes, but someone lighter. The biscuit base had remained firm and crunchy thanks to its covering of caramel and the slices of banana added a nice texture contrast to the mashed banana in the filling and the crisp base. There was a slight hint of cinnamon which complemented the other flavours wonderfully without being obviously cinnamony. Delicious.

I hadn’t told my family what I was doing and after serving them all slices and watching them gobble it up they couldn’t believe it when I told them there was no cream cheese involved. Its taste is so indulgent and satisfying that you would never guess it was made with Greek yoghurt. Even using the full fat Greek yoghurt there is only 130kcal and 10g fat per 100g compared to the cream cheese which has 240kcal and 23g fat per 100g – that’s nearly double the calories and nearly 2.5 times more fat compared to the yoghurt!! So next time you fancy a rich and creamy indulgent cheesecake why not try reaching for the Greek yoghurt instead of the cream cheese? I know I’ve been converted!

Banana & Caramel Cheeseless Yoghurt Cheesecake
(An Apple & Spice recipe creation)

Ingredients
190g digestive biscuits
75g butter
500g full fat Greek yoghurt (I used Total)
50g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp cornflour
50ml double cream
1 tsp cinnamon
3 bananas
½ tin (180g) dulce de leche caramel

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Have a 7inch/18cm deep springform tin to hand.
Crush the digestive biscuits until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Melt the butter and stir in the crushed biscuits and mix until they are well coated. Press the mixture into the base of the tin and place in the fridge to chill for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, cut two of the bananas into 5mm thick slices and warm the dulce de leche slightly in the microwave to make it more spreadable – it does not need to be hot or runny.
Remove the base from the fridge and spread over the dulce de leche. Cover with a layer of sliced bananas and return to the fridge while you prepare the topping.
Mix the sugar and cornflour together and place into a large bowl. Add the yoghurt and cream and beat until combined.
Mash the remaining banana and any leftover banana slices until very mushy. Add to the yoghurt mix along with the cinnamon and eggs. Beat well until everything is well combined – it won’t go completely smooth because of the banana.
Pour the yoghurt banana mixture over the top of the chilled base. Blob a few spoonfuls of the dulce de leche on top and swirl into the mix.
Place the tin on a baking tray and bake for 50-55 minutes. The cheesecake will have puffed up and turned lightly golden around the edges. It should still have a little wobbly in the centre when gently shaken, but not actually be liquid.
Allow to cool completely in the tin before refrigerating for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight before serving.
To serve, run a sharp knife around the edge of the tin and release from the ring.
Serves 8-10