-
6 apples cored but not peeled - 6 carrots
- 8 pitted dates
- 2 cups whole grain flour
- 1 TBL baking powder
- ½ cup olive oil
- 2 eggs
- 3 packages cream cheese
- 3 TBL maple syrup
- Zest from 1 lemon
Place your apples, carrots and dates in your food processor (in batches as to not over fill your bowl) and blend until well chopped. In a large bowl combine your whole grain flour and baking powder and add the wet fruits to the dry mixture. Place in 2 eggs and olive oil and stir until your batter is combined. Oil mini-muffin tins and fill with carrot cake batter. Bake in pre-heated 350° oven for 30 minutes.
To prepare frosting, beat cream cheese with maple syrup and the zest from one lemon. Frost or pipe icing onto cupcakes when they are completely cooled.
Makes 24 mini-cupcakes
how is maple syup better for a diabetic than sugar
I’m not a nutritionist, so I actually don’t know much about the difference between various “sugars” natural or processed. What is important to me, since my body doesn’t do well with artificial sweeteners, is that the food that I make has MINIMAL SUGAR (be it maple, fructose, honey, dates etc.)
If I crank the numbers for this recipe at Spark (http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp) it comes up with only 177 calories, and 4 grams of sugar. (This one isn’t one of my low fat creations though, weighing in at over 10 grams of total fat per cupcake!)
Compare this to a traditional carrot muffin recipe with cream cheese frosting, like this one at AllRecipes …
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fluffy-Carrot-Muffins-with-Cream-Cheese-Frosting/Nutrition.aspx
Which has 362 calories, 18.7 grams of fat and 33.2 grams of sugar! I can’t imagine we all don’t kill off our pancreas with that level of sugar in our diet. But I suppose some people can handle it. I can’t. So I make do and create foods that still satisfy my sweet side 😉 without sending me into a sugar bounce!