Peeled Snacks: Secret Ingredient in the Citroën Cake!
In today’s blog, I am featuring Peeled Snacks. They’re a troupe of organic, dried fruits with no added sugar that I am pretty crazy about. A few months ago, the people who market Peeled Snacks sent me 4 pouches to taste and review.
I handily scarfed down my favorite: Go Figure. It’s a combo pack of dried apricots, figs, and dates. Yes, please!
Peeled Snacks are gently dried, organic fruit snacks that are tasty, healthy and have no added sugar or other preservatives.
Peeled Snacks are available at Whole Foods Markets as well as online. They are great for kids’ school lunches, on a road trip, or when you need to fuel up for a race.
Peeled Snacks are made with ingredients we all recognize and can pronounce! Gently-dried fruit with no sugar added. The snacks provide a natural source of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They have no artificial flavors or colors and are gluten, wheat, cholesterol and dairy free. Peeled Snacks sources from the U.S. whenever possible, and as part of its commitment to sustainability, has partnered with the American Farmland Trust to promote and save American farmland.
In fact, I used Peeled Snacks to make decorations on the Citroën cake I made for RB. The cake was Paleo friendly with the only sugar in it being in the white chocolate I used for the frosting and the natural sugar in the fruit.
Andy’s Tires
Recipe:
1 package Peeled Snacks Farmer’s Market Trio (dried apple, grapes, and cherries)
About 1 cup orange juice
1 Tbs honey
2 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
White Chocolate or Dark Chocolate discs
In a glass bowl, combine the contents of the Peeled Snacks Farmer’s Market Trio and pour enough orange juice over it to cover the fruit. Microwave the fruit in 15 second intervals until it is rehydrated. Then place the fruit in a food processor with the cocoa and the honey. Pulse until the fruit is completely blended and comes together. It will be pliable (like Play-Doh). Then you can form it into tire shapes and place a disc of chocolate on the tire to form a rim.
It was a fun way to decorate the cake without using fondant, which I would have normally used on a cake like that if I were still baking with sugar. I have to say, the tires were my favorite part of the cake! The best thing is, I used the fruit on a whim…I just happened to have it on hand. 🙂
I also used the Dried Mango from the Peeled Snacks line to dip in chocolate and lay it all around the cake, as if the car were driving through the French countryside. Perfection! I wish I had more Peeled Freakin’ Snacks in the house right now!! 🙂
About Peeled Snacks
In 2004, Noha Waibsnaider noticed that something was missing in the snack market. Why? She could get salty chips, over-processed fruit, or energy bars with mysterious ingredients, but she couldn’t find something that made her feel good about snacking. So she set about to fix that problem. Her solution? Tasty and nourishing treats that are now Peeled Snacks. Noha’s vision for Peeled Snacks was to make healthy snacking as close to natural as possible and a satisfying part of life.
You can follow Peeled Snacks on twitter here and find them on Facebook here.
Citroën Cake: Gluten Free, Sugar Free, Mostly Paleo
Just thought I would show off what I have been working on for the past few evenings in between three jobs and the workout schedule. As you can see, Andy has a 1961 Citroën, and I did my best to recreate it for this birthday cake.
It turned out rather well considering fondant and food coloring are completely off limits with Paleo. On the other hand, I did use copious amounts of white chocolate (organic) and some butter in the blue frosting. Oh, and the blue coloring is made with red cabbage (weird, I know) and a bit of baking soda.
Check back on this post if you are interested, and I will post the recipes techniques I used on the fillings and components of this cake. Many things were tweaked from other websites and somethings just came to me as I was making it.
BTW, happy 10 month-aversary, Andy! 😀
UPDATED:
CAKE PART:
I wanted to leave out the agave nectar (decided NOT paleo, and I wanted to make enough batter to fill the car pan, so I adapted the recipe for German Chocolate Cake (adapted from Elena’s Pantry) to suit my needs. Here’s what I did:
1 1/4 cup coconut flour, sifted
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup xylitol
2 teaspoon celtic sea salt
1.5 teaspoons baking soda
15 eggs
1.5 cups coconut oil
1 ½ cups honey
1/4 coconut milk
1.5 tablespoons vanilla extract
In one bowl, combine the dry ingredients: coconut flour, cocoa powder, xylitol, salt and baking soda
In the mixer bowl, mix eggs, oil, honey, and vanilla.
Add dry the ingredients into the mixer bowl, rotating additions of the coconut milk and continue to blend until well combined, but not overly mixed. Oil the pans you’ll be using and dust with coconut, almond flour, or flax seed. Pour batter into pans and bake at 350° for 35-45 minutes.
Check back for the filling and frosting recipe as well as what I did to make the windows and tires. 🙂
Gluten and Sugar Free Baking in Sacramento
OK, I know how that sounds. To anyone on a standard American diet, sugar free and gluten free sound like flavor free. I am here to change your mind! 🙂
On Sunday, I retired my old website, cakegrrl.com. I didn’t see the point of maintaining the blog because the name alone is 180° degrees from the lifestyle I now lead. The site contained hundreds of recipes containing processed food, wheat, sugar, etc. and I just didn’t want to tie myself to any of that anymore.
So now, here it is… I have redirected the cakegrrl.com traffic to this site, and I am hoping my long time readers will embrace the change. One thing I decided I would do over the weekend, is make myself available for hire again as a baker. The only catch is that the treats I make will be gluten and sugar free, as well as entirely from scratch and made from organic ingredients whenever possible.
Last year, I had high aspirations of being on the Food Network show Cupcake Wars, and my pals Ryan Donahue and Moriah Piper helped me make an audition video. Though I didn’t make it on the show, this video shows some of what I can do, why I believe in gluten/sugar free, and it still makes me smile when I watch it. 🙂
Is a cake made from almond flour Paleo? Hmm… not exactly, but the desserts I make are far more healthy and nutrient dense than a cake made with vegetable shortening, flour, and sugar (not to mention soy, soybean oil and artificial colors/flavors). Everything you see in the slideshow above is gluten and free of refined sugar. The chocolate I use for my truffles, cookies, cakes etc. is 70% cacao content or higher.
If you have a gluten allergy, or have adopted a gluten-free or Paleo lifestyle for whatever reason, and you are looking for someone to cater dessert or a cake for your event, you can contact me at misscavegrrl at gmail. I am especially interested in working with gluten free or Paleo brides-to-be! Cheers!
Picture of me was taken by Debbie Cunningham. Check out her Facebook page here!
cavegrrl.com 