Clean Eating Breakfast Cake – “Healthified”

I gave away my white sugar.

I did. It was hard. A good pound or more of it just walked out my door one day. I told my friend, “I just can’t justify feeding it to my family anymore.” She could, which was fine for me because I didn’t have to waste it.

Lately, I have been on this amazing food journey. Every step I take I discover something new about what I can do to really FEED my family. Food is more than just food. There are nutrients and anti-nutrients, probiotics, good sugars and bad sugars, good fats and bad fats. We’re not being told the real story. The good fats are actually those we have been told to avoid! Saturated fats are good! Mind. Blown.

Cue whole milk (pastured and raw if you can get it!), butter, ghee, lard, coconut oil, FAT. It’s not all bad. Of course, everything in moderation, but I want you to know, it’s ok to put butter on your veggies. In fact, it’s encouraged. Because that little bit of fat helps your body utilize many of those vitamins you’re eating.

This whole journey started with the purchase of one book. Nourishing Traditions. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be healthier, happier, and really eat well. Then I started fermenting. First sauerkraut, then pomegranate “soda”, then dilly pickled carrots… All these have helpful, tummy healing, brain boosting probiotics.

Then the sugar. So, goodbye refined, white, bleached sugar. Hello sucanat, honey, maple syrup, coconut (palm) sugar.

And this is where we get to cake. Breakfast cake.

I found a recipe that called for 2 cups! of sugar… for a breakfast or coffee cake! (Aside: You’ll have to excuse me. As a Mormon, I don’t drink coffee, so calling this a coffee cake seems odd to me. We call it breakfast cake around here.)

It called for brown sugar; but brown sugar is really white (refined) sugar with molasses added to it. You can bet that molasses probably isn’t organic either. But, here’s a cool fact about coconut sugar: It tastes like brown sugar! Score!

The recipe I read originally called for refined (not clean) brown sugar, oleo (yuck!), refined flour, and some other ingredients that weren’t so bad. But I knew I could replace those bad ones. So, without further adieu… the recipe.

Clean Eating Breakfast Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups coconut palm sugar or sucanat

1 cup coconut oil (or butter, or a mixture of the two)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups unbleached flour (I prefer spelt flour and grind my own. But einkorn or emmer are also good. Read why here and here.)

1 cup of sour milk or buttermilk (Good way to use up your milk if it sours! Keep in mind, raw milk sours beautifully over time. Pasteurized milk rots. Don’t make the mistake of using rotten pasteurized milk!)

1 teaspoon baking soda

Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon together. Then mix coconut oil/butter in with your hands until mixture resembles crumbly sand. Reserve one cup for topping. Stir baking soda into sour milk/buttermilk. Add to flour/sugar/oil mixture. Stir to combine. Pour into greased 13×9  pan, and sprinkle with topping. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm (or that evening with ice cream!).

The changes I made were 1:1. Everything came out perfectly. My family devoured this recipe. And I know that it was much healthier than it was in 1962 when sweet “Mrs. McCarter” wrote it in a small-town cookbook. I hope you enjoy it. Please comment and let me know what your favorite recipe was that you “healthified” or cleaned up.

Happy (clean) eating!

~Veronica