Easter, and certainly an Easter during lock-down, calls for a celebration cake with a bit of a zingy pick-me-up. So I thought I’d try making a zesty orange-flavoured cake, decorated with (non-diabetic) MiniEggs as a treat. The cake itself has zest and juice from two oranges incorporated into the batter, and after baking I drizzled it with an orange and diabetic-sugar syrup, before icing with orange-coloured diabetic cream-cheese icing flavoured with yet more orange zest. As we all know, we eat with our eyes before we do with our mouths, and I think colouring icing the colour you expect it to taste from the aroma it gives off, somehow seems to enhance the flavour you are expecting to taste! Alice enjoyed helping to separate a big bag of MiniEggs out into different colours, and we decorated across the top of the cake with colour-coordinated spirals. And yes, it’s true that MiniEggs are not diabetic-friendly, but this is a special occasion and the rest of the cake is sin-free!

During these strange times of quarantine where we are supposed to be avoiding going to the shops as far as possible, most of us will have instead been searching through the dark depths of our freezers for food inspiration, and to this I have been no exception! Happily, I stumbled across a freezer bag of peeled cored and blanched cooking apple chunks which were harvested from our apple tree last autumn – and thus I was inspired to have a first attempt at baking a diabetic-friendly Dorset Apple cake. It came out very moist inside, due to the extra water from the blanching and freezing of the apples prior to using them for baking. I decorated it with a spiral of thin slices of eating apple arranged neatly over the deliciously crisp top. It was very moreish, enjoyed being paired with a splash of cream, and went down very well with head judge Alice. However, recipes can always be adapted and improved upon, and I have a few ideas for what I can do to make the bake even better next time.

I’ve been working on refining my diabetic brownie recipe today; using lower percentage cocoa dark chocolate, and playing with the ratios of butter, flour, sugar-substitute and egg. The result is a very rich decadent brownie, which packs a strong chocolatey-punch. It’s nice with a small spoonful of whipped cream to cut through the richness, and Alice liked it so much she had seconds!

What better way to pass the time in quarantine than to work on some recipe iterations?? I’ve had my diabetic carrot cake recipe perfected for a few weeks now, but I was struggling with adapting my cream cheese icing recipe to get the correct consistency. Seems that now I’ve finally cracked it though; I had to swap to a different type of sugar-substitute, and shift the ratio of fat:sugar. Now the only problem is that there’s only me and Alice here to eat it all…

I thought it would be nice to start with an introduction to myself and my daughter – my name is Helen but on here I’m also known as DiaMummy! My daughter, Alice, is 2 years old, and has been diabetic since birth and probably before. She has a very rare sub-type of diabetes called neonatal diabetes. It is genetic in nature, but doctors have thus far been unable to identify which mutation she has. The result is that sometimes her pancreas produces some insulin, and other days it doesn’t produce any. This is unlike type I diabetics, who’s immune system attacks the beta-cells in the pancreas which produce insulin, until they are unable to produce any of their own insulin at all. Alice is treated with daily insulin injections, just like a type I diabetic, but the difference is that the number of units of insulin she needs is not directly proportional to the amount of carbs which she consumes. Her condition is 1:500,000 within the population, and there is no familial history of diabetes, so we were not expecting to have a diabetic child by any stretch of the imagination. Despite our daily battles to keep Alice’s blood sugar levels under control, she is the happiest, cutest, smartest and bravest little girl I know, and I could not be more proud of her for what she has overcome so far, and how she takes everything in her stride without so much as batting an eyelid! She gives me the determination to keep battling through everyday, and the motivation to ensure that she never has to miss out on a piece of cake!

https://www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-the-basics/other-types-of-diabetes/neonatal-diabetes

I know what I’m doing when it comes to baking diabetic-friendly cakes, but when it comes to blogging? Turns out; not so much!