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

1. Preheat your oven to 170C (340F), grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.
2. Beat egg yolks with half the coconut sugar in a bowl
3. 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
4. Add almond meal and mix through
5. Beat egg whites until peaks form
6. Add rest of coconut sugar
7. Fold into the beetroot and chocolate mixture carefully
8. Pour into your cake tin & bake for an hour
9. Turn your oven off and open the door, allow your cake to sit for 10 minutes before turning onto your cake rack or board.
10. Dust with raw cacao before serving.
11. Delicious served still warm with some organic vanilla ice-cream.

POSTED BY: Luke Baylis