Gluten-Free Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Yesterday was Bruce's birthday and I decided to make his usual favorite cake - carrot cake, only gluten-free...and nobody could tell the difference. I used a recipe from the same blog that I used for Lauren's birthday cake called Downshiftology. It's a Paleo food blog. I've discovered that Paleo people really like their sweets. So, if you want a good gluten-free recipe, check out the thousands of Paleo food blogs. After reading The Plant Paradox book, I decided to try out the diet and see if it helped my achy joints that I have from arthritis. Unfortunately, the P.P. diet is more than just gluten-free, although gluten-free is a large part of it. I'm finding that the gluten-free part is the easiest part of the P.P. diet. The P.P. diet's philosophy is to improve the bacteria in your G.I. tract by feeding the "good" bacteria and to starve the "bad" bacteria. Lectin, the protein in many foods (like grains), feed the "bad" bacteria so that's why you want to eliminate them from your diet. But other things like sugar, unhealthy fats, chemicals, casein in milk - specifically casein A1 also feed the "bad" bacteria. You, therefore, are suppose to have only casein A2 milk which I found at Fred Meyer grocery store; buy all organic foods to avoid chemicals which is easy to do since most foods also have an organic version; avoid omega-6 fats and hydrogenated fats which is easy; but the hard one...avoid sugar. They list all kinds of alternative sweeteners in the book but they don't taste the same. I've figured out how to adapt to switching to alternative flours but I haven't figured out how to avoid good, old-fashioned sugar. I need to continue to work on that, but for a special occasion, I'm just going to splurge, like yesterday. I used the basic standard cream cheese frosting on this cake and pecans which are low in lectin and everyone loved it, especially Bruce. He had two pieces.   

I tried to make the whole meal lectin-free and was almost able to pull it off except Bruce wanted bananas in his fruit salad and bananas are a high lectin food.  

The coleslaw and green salad were all compliant but the marinated meat had soy in it which is also high lectin.  I used my teriyaki flank steak recipe that is a family favorite and I substituted tamari sauce instead of soy sauce so it was gluten-free and you couldn't tell the difference.  But it still had soy in it that is high lectin.  See how hard it is?  I haven't been keeping a detailed log on how I've been feeling but I'm going to start doing that because some days I feel really great and wonder if it's the diet.  I've been so busy trying out new recipes and weird food products to substitute everything that I really haven't been paying attention if it's actually helping.  Now that I feel like I have a handle on this P.P. diet, I'm going to start keeping serious food log.  In the meantime, I really don't want to miss out on special occasions like birthdays so sugar - here I come!

I found a really excellent substitute for drink mixtures that I blogged about for Labor Day called Be Mixed.  On Thursday, we also used their margarita mix on our last 80 degree summer day of the year and it was pretty good, too.  (From my Instagram stories...)  

We had Mexican food on Thursday because I wanted to try out these grain free tortillas that I found at a local Thriftway grocery store in the freezer section from Siete Foods.

They were great and they also make really good tortilla chips that I actually like better than regular corn tortilla chips.  They are very light and crispy and nobody can tell they are not regular tortilla chips.  

Like I said, the gluten-free part of the P.P. diet is the easy part.  Sugar?  That's another story.  In the meantime, enjoy this delicious gluten-free carrot cake.  

Cake

2-1/2 cup almond flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1 cup coconut sugar

1 Tbsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 tsp. salt

5 large eggs

1/2 cup butter, melted and room temperature

1/2 cup applesauce

2 tsp. vanilla

3 cups shredded carrots or about 1-1/2 pounds

1/2 cup chopped pecans (plus extra for decorating)

Cream Cheese Frosting

16 ounces cream cheese at room temperature

4 Tbsp. butter at room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar (or more, as needed)

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1.  Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2.  Over the bottom of two 9"-cake pans with parchment paper.

3.  Add all the the dry ingredients to a medium bowl and whisk together.  

4.  In a separate bowl, add the eggs, butter, applesauce and vanilla extract.  With electric mixer on medium speed, blend together for 30 seconds. 

5.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet and blend for another minute, or until well combined.  

6.  Fold in the shredded carrots and chopped pecans.

7.  Evenly divide the cake batter between the two pans.  

8.  Bake the cakes for 30-35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  

9.  Let the cakes cool for 15 minutes in the pan.  Then remove them from the pan and continue cooling on a cooling rack.

10.  While the cakes are cooling, make the cream cheese frosting.  Combine all frosting ingredients together and blend in an electric mixer on medium speed.

11. Frost the top of the bottom layer and place the second cake layer on top and continue frosting the sides and top of cake.  

12.  Decorate with chopped pecans or as desired.  Here are photos of previous decorated carrot cakes I've done in the past.