Valentine’s Day can be a great time for baking treats for the ones you love! Here are some paleo baking tips and subs, so that you, yes YOU, can recreate any regular recipe into something scrumptously paleo. Some tinkering of course may be needed, it won’t be full proof, but it’s pretty decent.

Some Basics:

• Vegetable oil: sub coconut oil.
• Flour: sub almond meal and unsweetened coconut flakes. For example: if the recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, sub 1/2 cup of almond meal and 1/2 cup of coconut. This will help cut the density of the almond meal.
• Milk: unsweetened applesauce! Really? Yeah, it helps with moisture.
• Sweeteners: Fruit, agava nectar, honey, unsweetened applesauce

Let’s take a sample recipe. This is a carrot cake recipe I got from Allrecipe.com

Regular Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups grated carrots
• 1 cup chopped pecans

So let’s run it through the paleo recipe converter and see what we get:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups coconut oil
• choice of sweetener to taste, you’ll need a decent amount. My preference is agave nectar.
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
• about 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce (gauge this depends on moisture of your mixture and if you want the extra sweetness)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder (there are some gluten free options if you wish in the store for baking powder and soda)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups grated carrots
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional, more nuts)
• Optional: you can add raisins, which helps the sweetness, and 3 cups of grated zucchinis, like the bread

I usually will make the cakes as little cupcakes instead. Have fun experimenting with different recipes! Try muffins and brownies and cakes. Have fun!

Posted on February 1st, 2009 under Paleo Diet, Recipes • Tags: paleo baking. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed