Low Carb Chocolate Almond Torte

Low Carb Chocolate Almond Torte

 (Also known as Chocolate Cake!)

This is a yummy treat for diabetics, or anyone on a low carb diet. I adapted this recipe from one I found on the web years ago. Sorry, I don’t recall where. Its not only rich and delicious, its also gluten free!

You can make this in just one bowl if you prefer, or even your food processor.I like to use two bowls, one for wet and one for dry ingredients. Either way, it doesn’t take long to mix and it tastes great. It has a slightly different texture from cake mixes and scratch cakes, but is still delish!

This torte (cake), is made from almond meal, which can be bought at health food stores and sometimes can be found in the bulk food section of your grocery store. If you can’t find ground almonds, you can use ground pecans. I store my almond meal in my freezer to keep it fresh. Since my diagnosis of diabetes, this is my favourite birthday cake.

DRY INGREDIENTS:

2 cups ground almonds or pecans
1/3 cup cocoa 
1 teaspoon baking powder 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
1 cup granular Splenda for baking 

WET INGREDIENTS:

4 eggs 
1/2 cup (I stick) butter, melted 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
1/2 cup water

PREPARATION:

Heat oven to 350 F. Spray an 8 or 9 inch round cake pan or spring-form pan with PAM. If you don’t have Pam, use margarine or butter to grease the pan well.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, using with a spoon.

Mix all the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, and mix until well-blended.

Pour mixture into greased pan and bake. The exact time will vary with the size of your pan, and the material (metal, pyrex, etc). Start checking at about 25 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cut when cool.

If desired, serve with home-made whipped cream sweetened with Splenda.

NOTE: I like to use a Pyrex cake pan that has a snap on plastic lid, so I can leave it in the pan and just cut and serve as needed. It’s a bit crumblier than regular cake, so serving it in the baking dish is easier than trying to turn it out onto a plate to serve. Do not store it in a metal cake pan, they can go rusty.   Once its baked and cooled, cover and keep it in the fridge. It freezes well, as long as you wrap it well to prevent drying out.   If you plan to freeze it, cut into serving size pieces and freeze 2 per package so you can thaw out only what you need.   The following is only an approximation - nutritional Information: Serves 8, each piece has approximately 2 grams of NET (effective)  carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 6 grams of protein, 334 calories.


Low Carb Chocolate Icing

Mix one tub of Philly 95% fat free cream cheese, with 3 Tablespoons of cocoa powder and 3 to 4 packets regular Splenda (to taste). Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and stir in well

This spreads better when at room temperature, but it must be kept cold after spreading. You can soften it slighlty in the microwave on the lowest setting, till it becomes more spreadable.

This icing must be kept refrigerated, so once you have iced your cake, cover and put in fridge right away. This is great on the low carb Chocolate Torte. Spread it thin, its rich tasting. If you need to make it go further you can mix in a couple of tablespoons of soft margarine, which also makes it easier to spread.  If you don’t care about the fat content, you can use regular Philly cream cheese, instead of the low fat version.

Please remember to store the torte, (especially the iced version),  in your fridge, so it won’t go bad. Cream cheese must be kept cold, and almond meal tortes do not stay fresh as long as flour based cakes because of all the eggs, and the nuts. This is not a flour based cake, so keep it cold!

I like to freeze about half of the torte (cake) it for another occasion. This torte is low carb, but still pretty rich, so I don't eat too much of it at one time. Its also a bit pricey to make, but well worth it and you can make it last quite a while if you freeze most of it and just thaw out a piece or two for a special treat now and then.

 Enjoy!