I fell asleep last night dreaming of a cake so moist that forks would slide through it like warm butter. Not sure why anyone was eating butter with forks in my fantasy but it seemed to make sense at the time. I often have intense sugar treat dreams when I’ve been exercising intensely or having a high stress time. Neither is the case right now, I guess I just felt I deserved something really delicious to console me. See the Halloween foodstuffs and decorations I ordered did not arrive here to me in France in time for this year’s post.

Rather than continuing to wallow over my misfortune, I decided to cheer myself up with a totally non-traditional but super wonderfully satisfying, nutritious treat.

While this cake does in fact have sugar (it’s coconut, but don’t fool yourselves, it’s still sugar!), it’s packed full of whole foods that make me feel pretty good about enjoying it.

Right off the bat I’m gonna get loads of questions about the pistachios used as a garnish here. Nope, they’re not high histamine but yes you could still react nonetheless. And yup, people often have nut allergies (I don’t). If you’re not sure how you do with them, don’t use ’em! Use anything you like or just omit any garnish at all.

As with all my recipes, please view this recipe as a mere suggestion, a template for you to modify at will. The idea behind all my recipes and the books they’re in, is to show how I used high nutrient antihistamine and anti-inflammatory foods to heal my body, but they’re not meant to be followed to a T. I think one of the best things we can do for ourself is learn how to cook and my approach is pretty basic: bung it all in, heat it up and consume!

I chose to use them because pistachios are full of carotenes (also found in carrots), vitamin E, vitamin B6, copper and iron, and they may help promote good cholesterol, as well as just generally fighting cancer and all that other great stuff [1]. A study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, also found that pistachio oil significantly affects genes involved in immune response, defense response to bacteria and gene silencing [2].

You’ll find recipes full of foods with antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties my books Anti-Recipes and The Anti-Cookbook

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED HEALING HISTAMINE PLAN. 

Young Thai coconut, along with mature coconut possesses anti-inflammaotry and pain killing activity as well as being anti-bacterial [3]. The coconut meat rather than oil is always my first choice, but often impractical as carrying them home from the market is a bit of a bugger!

This recipe uses chickpea or bean water (aquafaba) instead of eggs. I was never a fan of the flax “eggs” so was really excited to discover that it’s a great alternative. You can read all about how to replace eggs with bean water in this post.

In this low histamine recipe you can: replace the sugar with any other sugar, any gluten free flour in the same ratio, use any oil you like, use flax eggs rather than the aquafaba or use eggs if you prefer, and you can of course omit the garnish.

You will need a cake tin smaller than the size of a dinner plate. I didn’t have a tape measure to give you an exact size sorry!

Zucchini cake with cashew or coconut vanilla frosting and pistachio

Makes: 1 cake just smaller than a dinner plate

Ingredients:

Cake
2 cups grated zucchini
1.5 cups coconut sugar
1 cup chestnut flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 cup coconut oil
9 tbsp aquafaba or 3 eggs
1 tsp raw vanilla powder
1 tsbp lemon juice
pinch salt

optional 
1 tsp baking powder/calcium carbonate/vitamin c

Frosting
1 cup soaked cashews or fresh young thai coconut meat
1/4 cup coconut nectar (omit if using the coconut meat)
1/4 cup water or coconut water
1-2 tsbp coconut oil
raw vanilla, to taste
1/4 tsp lemon juice
pinch of salt

optional garnish
1/4 cup pistachios, finely chopped
extra vanilla

Directions:

Cake

Pre-heat your oven to 200C/380F.

Combine the wet ingredients, then the dry, then mix them in with each other.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes, depending on your oven.

Frosting

If using cashews, place in a blender with the coconut nectar, water or coconut water, vanilla, lemon and a pinch of salt. Process till smooth.

If using coconut: place meat in blender with its coconut water, vanilla, lemon and a pinch of salt. Process till smooth.

Remove cake from oven and allow to cool before removing from tin. You could place it in the freezer to speed up the process.

Use a spatula to smooth on the frosting.

Sprinkle with chopped pistachio if using, and or vanilla.

You’ll find recipes full of foods with antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties my books Anti-Recipes and The Anti-Cookbook

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED HEALING HISTAMINE PLAN. 

————- REFERENCES —————

[1] http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/pistachio.html

[2] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-pistachios-have-anti-inflammatory-properties-79413022.html

[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20645831