If juice cleanses aren’t for you, perhaps you’ll be into the ‘cake cleanse’

BEHOLD, the diet that actually encourages you to eat cake.

ONE of my colleagues did a juice cleanse recently, and I witnessed a lovely, kind, well-balanced individual turn into a she-devil with plummeting blood sugar and a bad attitude.

As such, any mention of ‘cleanse’ is usually met with me yelling ‘NO’.

It’s like a Pavlovian response: ‘Cleanse’, ‘NO’. ‘Cleanse’, ‘NO’.

But put the word ‘cake’ in front of ‘cleanse’ and you have permission to go on.

The concept of the Cake Cleanse was dreamt up by Deborah Schipper, a Sydney-based nutritionist and foodie who spent years battling skin ailments and severe allergies. After being told her only options were the likes of steroid creams which inflamed her conditions even more, Schipper set about experimenting with food as a way to manage her skin. And it seems it worked.

Now she’s sharing the healthy food plan she devised, and says it’s aimed at “the foodie who wants to improve their health with a balanced approach that incorporates healthy treats”. In other words, a diet for people who want to have their cake and eat it too.

The four-week Cake Cleanse Nutrition Plan provides a calendar of meals, recipes and an itemised shopping list for each of the four weeks. It walks you through what you need to bake on a Sunday, and how much to freeze for following weeks (this freezing-some-to-eat-later routine affords a fair bit of variety in the weekly menu, which is a bonus as so many diets can be gastronomically monotonous).

An example of a day’s eating includes healthy coconut banana bread for breakfast, vegies with tzatziki as a morning snack, fried rice for lunch, two ‘brownie bites’ for afternoon tea and wild salmon cakes with salad for dinner.

The nutrition plan is complemented by a recipe ebook, and as far as we can tell, the recipe book is where the real gold lies. It’s packed with sweet treats that include caramel mug puddings, lemon cake bites, chocolate ganache cake and peanut butter frosting, most of which are made with hidden vegetables, fruit and beans (and as a side note, the vast majority of the recipes are gluten free). The recipe below for Coco Cupcakes is an example of what you‘ll find in the book.

“So many people struggle to cut out the treats ... and for many of us it’s just not realistic — and it leads to diet failure,” explains Schipper.

Nutritionist Susie Burrell looked over the Cake Cleanse for us, and agrees that there is real benefit in allowing yourself small healthy treats rather than depriving yourself of the foods you crave.

“We do know from neuropsychological research that human beings can only maintain extreme restriction for short periods of time. As such, diets that factor in regular treats (as long as they are calorie controlled) are more likely to be sustainable long term.”

While Burrell sees definite positives to the eating program, she says one issue people could face with the Cake Cleanse is self restraint.

“My only concern is that once we bake we tend to have large volumes of the sweet foods which generally get eaten because they’re there, even though the plan may only include one serve,” Burrell says.

So as long as you can stomach a side of willpower with your cake, this could be the eating regimen for you.

You can buy the Cake Cleanse Nutrition Plan and recipe ebook as a bundle, or just the recipe ebook by itself.

Coco cupcakes recipe

A cake that will give you a sweet hit without the calorie onslaught.

Makes 8 | Prep 10 minutes Cook 20 minutes

• 30g coconut flour

• 50g desiccated coconut

• 50g granulated stevia

• 3 eggs

• 50g coconut oil, melted

• 130ml coconut milk

• 1 lime, zest and juice

• 1 tsp baking powder

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan).

Line an 8 capacity muffin tray with 8 cupcake liners.

In a bowl, whisk the coconut flour, desiccated coconut and stevia to combine.

In separate bowl, whisk the eggs, add the coconut oil, coconut milk, lime zest,

juice and mix well. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until smooth.

Spoon batter into the cupcake liners and place in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes

or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool completely

before icing.

Originally published as If juice cleanses aren’t for you, perhaps you’ll be into the ‘cake cleanse’