Cycling food recipes: fruit cake and coconut and date slice

Most readers of VeloNomad know I am obsessed by quality food and great nutrition (nutrition plan for cyclists, are you wasting money on supplements, nutrition myths) as it’s quality eating (yes and exercise) that helped me lose 25kg.

Anyway, one of the things I really enjoy is cooking (especially the experimentation side) and recently I’ve turned to putting together my own cycling food recipes.

Here are two recipes (4 with variations) you can try to make yourself and adapt according to your own tastes. I think simple recipes are great to give you a starting point for experimentation and expansion.

The awesome thing about these recipes is you know exactly what’s in your snacks. In the cases below, we can mainly limit the amount of simple sugars or at least white sugar.

Recipe 1 – Super Sweet Fruitcake

Of course, you can get a super cheap fruitcake from Coles (for the non Aussies, Coles is one of two big supermarket chains in Australia) but who knows what’s in it.

• 1kg of dried mixed fruit
• 600mL of orange juice (I use fresh juice from oranges from our property, but, you could use anything really)
• 1 cup wholemeal self raising flour (you can swap a gluten-free alternative in too)

Makes 30 serves.

Method:

1. Soak the fruit overnight in the fridge.
2. Preheat oven to 180 C.
3. Mix fruit and juice with flour. It should be pretty moist. Add more juice (or water) or flour to suit.
4. Spoon into a greased (or lined with baking paper) pan and bake for 90-120 mins on 180 degrees, or until when you put a skewer (or chopstick) in the middle you don’t get doughy residue on it.
5. Cut into small squares and put in Glad zip lock bags and put in freezer.

Variations:

• Add chopped nuts
• Add cinnamon which helps mitigate sugar cravings

Recipe 2 – Fruitcake V2

The orange juice in Recipe 1 makes for some sweet fruitcake. A way to dial down the sweetness and reduce simple sugary carbs is to swap chocolate milk for juice. Or better still, skim milk + protein powder (my preferred option).

• 1 kg of dried mixed fruit.
• 600mL of skim milk and 30 grams of protein (chocolate is best) OR 2 cups of chocolate milk (or iced coffee)
• 2 cups wholemeal or plain S/R flour

Method:

1. If using protein powder and milk, mix the protein powder into the milk thoroughly.
2. Soak fruit in milk overnight
3. Preheat oven to 180 C.
4. Mix milk with flour. It should be pretty moist. Add milk or flour to suit.
5. Spoon into a greased (or lined with baking paper) pan and bake for 90-120 mins on 180 degrees, or until when you put a skewer (or chopstick) in the middle you don’t get doughy residue on it.
6. Cut into small squares and put in Glad zip lock bags and put in freezer.

Variations:

• Long life milk + instant coffee + protein instead of skim milk
• Add chopped nuts
• Add cinnamon which helps mitigate sugar cravings
• Creatine, Beta Alanine, etc

Makes 30 serves.

Recipe 3 – Steve Rigby’s coconut slice

Steve R is a local older rider who gets some serious riding in around where I live. The roads are dead, it’s bloody hot and humid but he just rides a lot. He’s also super lean and a health nut like most of us!

Local rider Gregorio B put me onto this the other day. This is freaking delicious.

• 500g chopped dates
• 500g desiccated coconut
• 500g of skimmed or full cream milk powder (must be powder)
• 1.25 cups of very hot water

Method:

1. Add dates to hot water and stir
2. Mix milk powder and coconut together thoroughly then add slowly to the dates.
3. When it’s all been added the mix will be quite dry, keep kneading it by hand.
4. Place mix into a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper – you’ll almost have to punch it in and keep working the mix and get it level about 10-20mm thick
5. Place in the freezer for 1-2 hrs……..
6. Remove and cut into squares when soft enough
7. Store in container with greaseproof paper between layers

You can halve the quantities or change them to suit.

Recipe 4 – Gregorio B’s Rigby-Frankenstein mix

Gregorio de Bono is another local rider who is super lean and showed me a thing or two in the hills the other day (he is nearly 60 and doesn’t mind me saying that).
He gave me some of his slice the other day out on a ride and told me it was a variation on Steve’s slice.

To Recipe 3, add:

• ½ cup sultanas
• ½ cup muesli or oats/rye or even quinoa

Method:

1. Cover sultanas and muesli in water in a microwave safe container and zap in microwave until soft then drain them.
2. Add sultanas and muesli to dates
3. Follow Step 1 in Recipe 3 onwards (i.e. mix hot water with dates, sultanas and muesli)

You can always add more or less water to get the right consistency and add your own ingredients.

I favour adding some protein powder too for longer rides.

Got a great recipe?

If you've got a great recipe for making cycling food, I'd love to hear it!