Wether your a diabetic or simply trying to cut down on sugar consumption, finding a great sugar-free dessert can be a chore, especially when your looking for one with no artificial sweeteners.
I recently experienced this dilemma when I was bringing a dessert to a dinner party where one party-goer was a diabetic, and another disliked artificial sweetener. When looking online, all the sugar-free desserts contained artificial sweeteners. Luckily, 
whilst raiding my family’s cookbook shelf I found a book called “Fancy, Sweet & Sugarfree” by Karen E. Barkie. All of the recipes in her book of desserts contain no sugar, honey or artificial sweetener, they are all fruit sweetened!
I decided to try her recipe for “Fresh Strawberry Flan” (found on Page 7), substituting the strawberries for various other berries and fresh fruit. The cake is described as “A large flat cake covered with a thin layer of cream cheese and topped with whole fresh red strawberries.” Yum!
Below you’ll find the ingredients for the cake and how I went about making it.
Cake:
4 large eggs, separated (room temp.)
1/3 C. unsweetened frozen pineapple juice concentrate, thawed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 C. unbleached white flour
1/4 ts. baking soda
Filling:
8-0z cream cheese, softened
2 Tb. milk
1 ts. vanilla extract
Topping:
2 pints fresh strawberries
I started by separating the egg yokes and then letting them warm to room temperature. While I was waiting for the eggs to warm up I measured out the flour and baking soda. Next, I beat the egg yolks on high for 5 minutes. While these were beating I microwaved the juice concentrate to finish the thawing process. Instead of pineapple juice I used orange, because the store was out of pineapple. Next, I beat the juice concentrate and the vanilla extract into the egg yolks. Once they were mixed I folded the flour mixture 
into the liquid mixture. It is important to be patient and gentle when folding, to keep the lightness of the cake. Setting this to the side, I whipped the egg white until they formed
stiff white peaks. When these were formed I carefully folded the yolk mixture into the whites. I covered an 11″ pie pan in butter and then poured the batter in. Then I baked it at 325 F for just under 25 minutes. The recipe said bake for 12 minutes, but the flan was not even close to done after that time. When a flan is done it’ll look like custard, but may still move slightly. Once the flan was cool I beat together all the ingredients for the filling. To spread it, I dipped a spatula in warm water before smoothing the topping, to make it easier. Instead of strawberries I topped my flan with blackberries and raspberries, and served it with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, for those who had more of a sweet tooth.
The flan was great. The texture turned out perfectly and the cream cheese provided a creamy addition. Even without the chocolate sauce or whipped cream the flan was an delicious treat.
