Diabetic-Friendly Cake: Sugarless, Butterless With Bulgar Wheat

Diabetes is a dreaded word these days. The metabolic disorder does not spare anyone who lives a sedentary lifestyle. Some say it is hereditary, but if it runs in your family, you still can avoid becoming a diabetic by practicing a healthy lifestyle - healthy means eat good food and move as much as you can. So a healthy lifestyle can help you ward off diabetes as long as you stay active and eat healthy.After my diabetes friendly cracker recipe, I have come up with this sugarless diabetic cake.

diabetes friendly cake recipe

Before moving on to the diabetes cake recipe, I would like to point a few things.
Do you know a majority of the diabetes-friendly recipes online are loaded with fat, calorie-dense white flour and artificial sweeteners? Some so-called diabetic recipes use brown sugar, jaggery, confectioner's sugar, diabetes sugar, and you name it. I mean it surprises me more as to how can you misguide your readers who are trusting your word and recipes?

By claiming all such recipes as diabetes friendly, you are doing injustice to your readers.
Please make sure that diabetes friendly is one that

• is not calorie dense
• does not contain sugar in any form - white/refined/unrefined
• does not have fat overload (saturated & trans fat)

If you are a diabetic, you ought to follow a healthy lifestyle -

• take fewer calories
• watch your calorie intake
• say no to sugar
• take complex carbs, and avoid simple carbohydrates
• increase the consumption of dietary fiber
• drink loads of water
• keep a tab on your blood glucose count
• Go for a walk daily
• Try to walk miles every day - stay active, stay healthy

If you think avoiding sugar is the only way to manage diabetes, you are seriously wrong. Diabetes management is a huge subject that requires a multipronged approach.

• Eat more dietary fiber---say oats. 
• Try to go for healthy snacking options after every 2 hours...
• Do not stay empty stomach for long periods, else your blood glucose could spike after every heavy meal...
• Make sure you stay active...this is the best way to manage diabetes.

diabetes diet

I got this recipe inspiration from spices and flavors. So I modified the semolina cake recipe to try out a diabetic-friendly cake. It turned out good for diabetics and non-diabetics with its subtle sweetness from stevia drops.
Stevia has zero calories, which makes it a healthier alternative to white/refined sugar.
The best thing about stevia is it is sourced from plants. However, it does leave an aftertaste or cool or minty sensation, but that's okay as long as you are able to enjoy a baked beauty sans sugar, right?

Here's what research says about stevia for diabetics:

research on stevia

Let's get started with making this sugar free cake for diabetes.

Ingredients
1 cup- suji/ whole wheat semolina (100 gm of semolina has 300 calories approx)
1/2 cup- dalia/cracked wheat/bulgar wheat
2 tbsp- coconut oil/ghee
1 cup- milk
1 cup- hung curd
1 cup- coconut (desiccated/dry)
2 tbsp- carrot puree (optional)
2 tbsp- spinach puree (optional)
20 drops- stevia (sweetness may vary from one brand to another) -I use organic stevia from Natural Sunrise - always do a taste test after 5-8 drops and increase the amount to suit your taste buds
Cinnamon powder
1 tsp- baking soda
1/2 tsp- baking powder (I didn't add, but you can go ahead with it to make the cake light)

stevia

How to make diabetes-friendly cake recipe: No Sugar Diabetes Food

• Mix milk, curd, and coconut oil. Better still to run the mixture in your food processor.
• Add cinnamon powder and stevia to it and whisk again.
• Add baking soda and powder to semolina and bulgar wheat or dalia.
• Fold in the dry ingredients into the wet mix.
• Now divide the batter into three parts - and then mix one with spinach puree, the other one with carrot puree.
• Preheat oven/mw convection to 180 degrees for 10 mts.
• Keep a greased baking pan ready.
• Pour the batter into the cake tin - one by one. I wanted to give it a tricolor shade but it all messed up in the pan. Nevertheless, it was a good first try at making a diabetic cake.
• Bake at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
• I have airfried the cake so it is an airfryer recipe.
• Preheat airfryer for 4 mins to 180degrees and airfry the cake for 30 minutes.
• Check after 30 mt if a skewer comes out clean.
• Allow the cake to cool down before slicing it up. Since it uses coarse ingredients, such as semolina and cracked wheat, it is prone to breaking or crumbling if the diabetes friendly cake is not allowed to cool down completely.
• Enjoy with your favorite beverage or just like that.
• This diabetic cake joins the list of my diabetes food recipes.

This is my first attempt at a diabetes-friendly cake. I will experiment further and try to ensure that I come up with more diabetes friendly recipes that are useful for diabetics and non-diabetics both in the true sense.