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Many of you may be wondering why the low-iodine diet is so important to follow and I will tell you. Over the course of the two weeks that a patient is adhering to the low-iodine diet, the body’s iodine stores start to deplete themselves and work themselves into a state where they are looking for more iodine to soak up – hopefully hungry for iodine at this point. Then the patient undergoes radiation therapy that allows the body to soak in radioactive iodine which the hungry iodine stores soak up as much as possible, killing off the cancerous cells. Therefore, the hungrier the stores are and the lower the amount of iodine or (hopefully) the complete void of iodine in an affected person’s body the higher the likelihood that the radioactive iodine treatment will work.

I know we are all hoping for the best as the next few days pass and the impending radiation therapy session gets closer. So, to keep spirits up and to curb the craving for baked goods, we are making a cake!

There is a recipe for apple cake on ThyCa but we made some minor changes and added some more flavor! In fact, it was pretty good, but we have some ideas to make it better! This is a nice sturdy cake that would lend itself to layering pretty well and it would be nice to be able to add something like that to the ThyCa Low Iodine Cookbook.

Prepping the apples to bake this cake was something of a marathon. I didn’t have a very sharp paring knife and it made peeling the apples a bit

almost naked apple...

more arduous a task than it should have been. Mei was none too pleased to sit in her Bumbo chair, watching me dice and peel apples for what seemed like an eternity and impatiently waiting to play with her toys in the living room while I quickly mixed the batter and slid the cake pan into the oven. A little while into the baking time and the house began to fill with a warm cinnamon apple smell that made us all drool and impatiently wait for the oven timer to ding. I planned to put the same cinnamon glaze on top each slice that we made for the blueberry muffins and got that out of the refrigerator so that it would warm up a bit and be less stiff.

Boy oh boy did the cake smell EVEN BETTER when it came out of the oven! I immediately ran a blunt knife along the edge of the pan to loosen it – although the cake clung pretty hard to the side of the pan. Don’t expect the cake to come out with very smooth edges, the lack of butter means that the cake will bake to the pan regardless of the oil greased pan. Once it was inverted, a very thin layer of the cake remained baked on the pan and we took a spoon to that, drizzled some cinnamon glaze and had a nice warm snack while the rest of the cake cooled.

Every bite was delicious, warm and this would make a very nice muffin as well – feel free to leave the apple chopped more coarsely if you like a soft, crisp bite of apple in your cake as well.

Ingredients:

in the pan ready for a tan!

  • 1C sugar
  • 1/2 C canola oil
  • 1 egg white
  • 1-1/4 C flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 2- 1/2 C apples, peeled and finely diced

 

Prepare the apples and put the bits into a medium bowl and sprinkle the sugar over them. Let them sit at room temperature for a half hour to macerate. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Once a half hour has passed, add the rest of the ingredients to the cake and mix it well until it is combined. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit in the bottom of the cake pan.

Grease a cake pan with canola oil, lay the parchment paper in the bottom of the pan and grease the top of the parchment paper then pour the batter into the pan. Using a spatula, spread the batter evenly across the pan and put it into the oven, baking for 30-45 minutes and the top is golden and a toothpick tester comes out clean.

baked, cooled and ready for delivery!

Cool in the pan for ten minutes and run a butter knife along the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Invert the cake onto a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature – or serve warm, drizzled with cinnamon icing!

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