LIFE doesn't get much sweeter than biting into a warm honey cake, fresh from the oven.

But in this kitchen, there's no refined sugar - nor gluten or dairy, for that matter - in sight.

This is Livia's - aka Olivia Wollenberg's - kitchen, and she's made her name by baking with more gut-friendly alternatives to the white stuff.

Wollenberg started off baking and selling hundreds of fresh crumbles from her mum's kitchen in North London, and now has a range of Raw Millionaire Bites - her gluten, dairy and refined sugar-free answer to millionaire's shortbread, filled with gooey date caramel - which are a bestseller in Selfridges' Food Hall.

Her honey loaf cake, which today she's shown me how to bake into mini muffins to share, uses raw honey, coconut palm sugar and ground almonds instead of flour, with coconut oil standing in for butter - ingredients which don't make her feel ill when she fancies a treat.

It was health problems that eventually inspired Wollenberg to revolutionise her approach to eating - and then turn it into a business idea.

"I was always the person at three o'clock who would be like, 'I need some chocolate, I need a cupcake'. I think a lot of people feel that - a working day is really long," confesses the 27-year-old, whose naturally sweet recipes are featured in her debut cookbook, Livia's Kitchen.

"I was always just living for food. But my stomach got more and more sensitive. I didn't want to go and see a doctor because I was so scared they would say to me, 'You can't eat gluten and dairy any more', so I just put up with it."

In spring 2014, things were so bad that her mum, who she was still living with at the time, told her enough was enough. "She said, 'You're not nourishing your body because what you're eating is just not staying in'," recalls Wollenberg.

She finally saw a nutritionist, who made her keep a food diary for two weeks.

"She looked at the first two pages and said, 'Just what I thought, you're someone who's going to need to follow a FODMAP diet'. And I was like, 'A FODMAP what?'"

FODMAPs are short-chain carbohydrates that can be poorly absorbed in the small intestine, resulting in IBS-like symptoms for some. Reactions can, of course, vary in severity.

For six weeks, she had to cut out a whole list of possible trigger foods, including apples, with the idea she'd then be able to gradually reintroduce them again.

"Most people can reintroduce 90% of foods and have one or two they cut out. I pretty much couldn't reintroduce anything, except apples."

Although she now says the restricted diet "ruined my life", it also set her on a path to swapping academia (she'd been studying neuroscience at UCL) for entrepreneurship.

"The thing I was most miserable about was having something indulgent and delicious without any gluten, dairy and refined sugar. So I started looking at blogs online and people were talking about using natural sugars, like dates, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and them reacting better with their body. I just started playing around because I needed a three o'clock pick-me-up. At the time it wasn't a business idea, it was just to keep me going because I was so miserable."

"I think life's too short to always be thinking how many cubes of sugar are in something. If granola's your favourite thing, just try and eat one which has less sugar in it and you'll be fine," Wollenberg adds.

Try some sweet treats from Livia's Kitchen yourself...

HONEY LOAF CAKE

(Makes 1 loaf)

  • Softened coconut oil, for greasing the tin
  • 320g jumbo oats, ground to an oatmeal before using (or 290g ground almonds and 30g buckwheat flour)
  • 250g raw honey
  • 110g coconut palm sugar
  • 75g melted raw coconut oil (make sure it is odourless)
  • Juice and zest of 1 big orange
  • 1tbsp grated fresh ginger
  • 1/2tsp ground nutmeg
  • 2tsps ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4.

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl with a spoon.

Line a 20cm x 11cm loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until the top is golden and slightly cracked. The cake will cool as it firms, but there should still be a slightly softer, wetter middle.

SUMMER PEACH CRUMBLE

(Serves 8)

For the filling:

  • 800g stoned and chopped peaches (skins on)
  • 100ml maple syrup
  • 1tsp vanilla powder

For the crumble topping:

  • 200g ground oats (grind jumbo oats to an oatmeal before using) or oat flour
  • 200g jumbo oats
  • 5tbsps melted raw coconut oil
  • 100ml maple syrup
  • 1/8tsp salt
  • 1 1/2tsp vanilla powder
  • Coconut yoghurt, to serve

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4.

Cook the peaches in a saucepan over a medium to low heat with the maple syrup and vanilla powder. Cook for about 20 minutes or until soft.

To a mixing bowl, add the ground oats or oat flour, jumbo oats, coconut oil, maple syrup, salt and vanilla powder and mix thoroughly.

Once the filling is nice and soft, add to an ovenproof dish and top with the crumble mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes until the topping begins to brown.

Serve with a dollop of coconut yoghurt.

Livia's Kitchen by Olivia Wollenberg, photography by Tara Fisher, published by Ebury Press, £20.