This delicious recipe came about because I wanted to bake something for a friend who is currently on the Dukan Diet so essentially not doing carbs. My mission was to make a virtually carb-free cake that would be tasty despite no flour or sugar, that anyone could eat and not feel deprived. I generally cook with unrefined ingredients wherever possible so didn’t want to use any frankenfoods either (manufactured substitutes such as sugar-free sweetener etc.)

My initial inspiration was this recipe which produced an incredibly light and airy texture using ground almonds. I then played around with it to create my strawberry and pistachio cupcakes. This totally hits the cake spot and also works for anyone with gluten or dairy issues.

Recipe: Strawberry and Pistachio cupcakes (makes 12 cupcakes)

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 vanilla stalk or 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Juice of 1/2 a lime
• 1 cup of ground almond
• 1/4 cup of coarsely chopped pistachios

1 cup of strawberries

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 190°C
2. Separate egg whites and yolks.
3. Beat egg whites and vinegar until stiff peaks form
4. Mix egg yolks, honey, baking soda, oil, vanilla
5. Add lime juice to egg yolk mixture
6. Add the ground almond and pistachio to the yolk mixture. Save some of the pistachio to put on top of cakes
7. Fold the egg whites into the mixture until well blended
8. Fill cupcake case nearly to the top
9. Chop strawberries in half and put on top of cupcake with a few bits of pistachio
10. Bake for 20 minutes

LAZY VERSION

If you don’t care about having a really light texture, you can pretty much just mix the dry and wet ingredients together in one go until well blended. Stir in the pistachios at the end and top each cup with a half strawberry. Bake for 25 minutes. As you can see from the picture below it is slightly more loaf-like texture yet equally scrumptious.