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Christmas 2019: Here’s how you can make the traditional plum cake healthier – more lifestyle

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A traditional Christmas feast is incomplete without the tasty plum cake. Whether you spend Christmas at home with your close ones or decide to have some fun at a party, you will find plum cakes everywhere. A concoction of bitter, sweet, spice and everything nice, it is a blend of a number of flavours and contains a mix of fruits and nuts infused in alcoholic beverages that have been soaked in the liquid for days or even months.

Needless to say, while they contain a variety of dried fruits and fruit mix, plum cakes can wreak havoc on one’s diet. In fact, while any dessert may have a detrimental effect on diet plans around Christmas, the plum cake is tradition, and it is perhaps better to find a healthier version than to avoid it completely.

Using healthier flour: All-purpose flour is usually used for baking, but it is not the healthiest option available out there. All-purpose flour is devoid of endosperm, which is essential for digestion. A healthier replacement to the all-purpose flour would be wheat flour, almond flour or even quinoa flour. Using a concoction of all-purpose flour and wheat flour too is more beneficial.

Not using butter: Another staple while baking is butter. Be it salted or unsalted, butter adds a texture to the plum cake, but can be an extremely bad option to the health. Using olive oil could be a healthier alternative.

Nuts and seeds: Plum cakes without dry fruits are unimaginable. And while rum/brandy soaked dry fruits make the cake delectable, adding chia seeds or sunflower seeds to it could add a healthy dimension, and add some extra crunch. Also, dried fruits like figs, raisins, cashews and walnuts are high in magnesium, potassium, calcium and a host of other vitamins which are beneficial to the human body.

Replace sugar: A cake which is not sweet makes no sense at all. However, sugar is not very healthy as it is full of empty calories sans nutrition. Instead, one can make their cakes healthier by using natural forms of sweeteners like honey, brown sugar or even jaggery. Another way of making it sweeter is by adding more raisins as well as crushed dates, which will add natural sweetness and make the cake more nutritious.

Add a dash of cocoa powder: Adding cocoa powder not only makes the cake decadent, it helps maintain blood circulation of the body and reduces risk of ailments due to issues of the circulatory system. It may also help lower blood pressure, studies suggest.

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