Screen Ban Birthday Weekend at Kangaroo Valley

This past weekend I took the rare opportunity to have some family time away in one of NSW’s great holiday locations, Kangaroo Valley. Not only was this a chance to celebrate my birthday, but more importantly it was a chance to spend some quality time with my family.
As you might have worked out by now, I’m a big enthusiast for getting out and about in the great outdoors and in this age of technology, I think it is more important than ever to make the effort. This year US site Mashable published that Americans spend 11 hours a day with electronic media and Australia is headed the same way with just over 10 hours spent with screens. That’s about 60-70% of the time that you are awake.
It’s also important to take time out from work. SumoSalad continues to be my passion and driving force, but even I need to be reminded that there can be more to life than my own business from time to time.
I highly recommend taking your family away on a trip like this in a National Park near you and even imposing a screen ban. That means no computers, smart phones, tablets, or TV. Quite a challenge, but by imposing a screen ban on ourselves, we could fully appreciate our adventures together which included kayaking, fishing, bushwalking and glow worm hunting.
And of course there was birthday cake. While I stay healthy with my food most of the time, a birthday calls for a treat that you can enjoy making and eating with the kids. We made a delicious beetroot and chocolate cake as a compromise between a healthy and indulgent desert, and a pretty unusual combination which is surprisingly good.
Try out this recipe for yourself and let me know what you think.
Beetroot Chocolate Cake
Recipe from The Whole Daily
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup almond meal (is great made fresh with your food processor, just blend 3/4 cup raw almonds as fine as you can.
- 180 gram high quality chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
- 2 medium beetroot finely grated (about 2 cups)
- 6 eggs separated
- 1/2 cup coconut cream
- 1/2 cup coconut sugar
Method
- Preheat your oven to 170C (340F), grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.
- Beat egg yolks with half the coconut sugar in a bowl
- Melt the chocolate in a bowl sitting over a saucepan of boiling water & add to your egg yolks & sugar with the grated beetroot & coconut cream and mix in thoroughly
- Add almond meal and mix through
- Beat egg whites until peaks form
- Add rest of coconut sugar
- Fold into the beetroot and chocolate mixture carefully
- Pour into your cake tin & bake for an hour
- Turn your oven off and open the door, allow your cake to sit for 10 minutes before turning onto your cake rack or board.
- Dust with raw cacao before serving.
- Delicious served still warm with some organic vanilla ice-cream.