An exquisite spiced ginger cake. Let its rich nutty flavour keep you warm while it’s cold outside.

My take on this seasonal classic replaces most of the wheat flour with ground almonds and sunflower seeds. Add in some chocolate and red wine, and we get a deep rounded taste. I need to calculate still what level of carbs this has — I’m not quite done that part of this site’s tooling. I’m guessing it won’t hit the low-carb mark of <20% calories from carbs, but certainly a lot lower than the classic version.

Having a healthier version of desserts is good, it lets us keep cakes and cookies in our healthy diet. It’s a bit hard to make it through the Christmas season if everything is strictly low-carb. Therefore I’m a bit lenient. I’m going for an overall reduced carb diet. If I eliminate the primary sources, like daily bread, pasta, and rice, then I have no problem consuming a few snacks on occasion.

I’m not going to just give in to my cravings, however. A lot of favorite recipes can be made healthier, and tastier, by substituting, or reducing, some of the ingredients.

For example, the amount of sugar in most classics is excessive. I want my desserts sweet, but not taste like sugar. Therefore I reduce the sugar levels, opting for other flavours and sources of sweetness. In this recipe I use some xylitol to both show it’ll work, and because it imparts a slight variation on the taste. After doing the first batter test, I added some honey as well. This improves the flavour. You should be able to freely select how much of which sweet ingredient goes into the cake.

I’m also unhappy with the excessive use of wheat flour. It doesn’t have much flavour, which is possibly the reason why we need to add so much sugar to it. Instead, I like to use nut flours. Almond and sunflower bring a lot of flavour to this cake. They also reduce the carbs and up the beneficial fat levels. Even with the sugar, this doesn’t feel like eating junk food.

Top with some whipped cream and enjoy.