This

Cake

Is

AMAZING.

I try and eat paleo all the time (that’s another post in itself), and it makes me so sad because I love cake. So much. Until now everything I’ve tried to bake that loosely conforms to the “rules” of paleo has tasted either like a bit of a brick or a combination of wallpaper and baking soda. So pretty much I used to just give up and make evil refined sugar cake.

This cake is AMAZING. So satisfying thanks to the dense almond flour, the coconut gives it a real good crumb, the perfect amount of sweetness (once you eat low carb for a while then you will start to find regular baked goods way too sweet) and best of all made with completely natural ingredients with no refined carbohydrates or nasty vegetable fats. And so easy! One bowl – well two really because you have to melt the butter in something but just whack everything in and mix. You don’t even have to worry about over or under mixing. I actually prefer this to my all time favourite, white sugar and white flour packed banana cake recipe. CRA-ZY.

I’ve adapted this recipe from Paleo Gourmet

3 cups almond flour
1/2 cup desicatted coconut
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
2 tsp raw honey *this amount is up to you. 2 tsp won’t  be enough for some but I recommend starting with it and seeing how you go.
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
80g very dark chocolate chopped or chips (we use lindt 85% or 90%)
4 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/4c raisins or sultanas (optional)

 
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees/180 celcius.  Line a 8″ square tin with baking paper.

In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Mix in the eggs, melted butter, honey, chocolate bits, raisins and vanilla. Add the almond flour, coconut, salt, and baking soda. Mix everything really well.

Bake for 20 to 35 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and springs back to the touch.

I’ve calculated the nutritional info as one cake makes 12 servings which are really very generous servings.

Each piece has 9g of protein, 25g of fat and only 7.5g of sugars. If you’re into calorie counting (you shouldn’t be) – 322 calories per serve. And those sugars are coming from fruit and a touch of natural honey, nothing else.

*Disclaimer – I know a lot of people will consider bananas to be not paleo and yes they are high on sugar/starch, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend eating a ton of them but they are a far better alternative than sugar or any sweetener ever in my books.

A lot has changed since I last posted my banana cake recipe, oh my gosh, that was almost FOUR years ago… I had a full time job as a programmer, I was going to the gym heaps, living in an apartment in Auckland with my husband of one year. I baked those banana cupcakes late at night and took them to work the next morning, I can remember that time so well… but it feels like an absolute lifetime ago.

This time I made this cake with the help of my son, standing on his little step beside me he is the best kitchen assistant anyone could ask for. Sure I have to double check what’s in the bowl every time I look away for rouge cars or spoons but he measures ingredients for me, cracks eggs, mixes and is a great taste tester.

I’ve made this many times over the years (oh god this makes me sound really old) and each time we change it up a bit, chocolate chips, spices, wholemeal flour… it’s a fab recipe.

Banana Cake

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees (350 farenheit) and prepare your cake tin or muffin pan.

125g butter
1 cup sugar <- we use brown but you can use whatever is in the cupboard
2 large free range eggs
3 medium bananas <- use some nice ripe ones from the fruit bowl
2 cups flour <- try replacing up to half of this with wholemeal
1/2 cup chocolate chips <- totally optional
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time beating well after each one.
Throw the bananas into your mixer and beat well. Or mash them and mix them in.
Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until all the flour is just incorporated.

Pour into tin or pans and bake until the middle springs back when pressed, about 12 minutes for muffins and 25 for a cake.

Get cake all over your face and enjoy!

2 whole oranges
2 whole lemons
Boil & Puree above.

5 large eggs
315g (1 1/2 cups) caster sugar
200g (2 cups) almond meal
75g (1/2 cup) flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 160°C.
Use an electric beater to whisk the eggs and 215g (1 cup) of the sugar in a large bowl until thick and pale. Use a spoon to stir in the orange mixture. Add the almond meal, flour and baking powder, and stir until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan and use the back of a spoon to smooth the surface. Bake in preheated oven for 1 1/4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

While cake and syrup are hot and still in tin pour syrup over cake and leave to cool in tin.

Syrup
1 Lemon
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup water

Place zest of lemon and juice in small saucepan. Add sugar and water and heat while stirring until sugar is dissolved. Heat for a further 3 minutes until thickened slightly.

This was a cake for my friend Melissa who turned 12 years old last week.

Inside the cake was what I normally bake when I am not sure of someone’s preference, layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream.

Bottom Cake flourless chocolate and orange with dark ganache frosting
Top Cake carrot and macadamia cake with cream cheese frosting

The decoration was rushed and gross, I find it way too hard to decorate a cake iced with cream cheese so it came out a bit of a disaster.

Recipe from ‘Baking from my home to yours’ by Dorie Greenspan

This is based on the famous Sour Cream Coffee Cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It has a super rich eggy batter which bakes into a moist soft tight crumbed cake, topped with a layer of sweet apricots and then a golden crumble topping.  It looks time intensive but it comes together very fast.

Click on more to see the recipe…

Streusel
1/3C packed brown sugar (2.5oz/72g)
2 T granulated white sugar (1 oz/26 grams)
1 cup walnuts or pecans (I used pecans) (4 oz/113 g)
1 ½ t cinnamon½ cup flour (2 ¼ oz/65 g)
4 T softened unsalted butter (1/2 stick/2 oz/57 g)
½ tsp vanilla

Batter
4 large egg yolks
2/3 cup sour cream (5.5 oz/160 g)
1 ½ t vanilla
2 cups flour (7 oz/200 g)
1 cup granulated sugar (7 oz/200 g)
½ t baking powder
½ t baking soda
¼ t salt

1 can apricot halves (or real fruit, or any fruit you feel like)

Prepare a 9 inch springform pan by lining the bottom with a circle of parchment paper cut to fit, and then greasing the rest. Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 degrees C.

In a food processor pulse the sugars, nuts and cinnamon until the nuts are coarsely chopped. Remove ¾ cup to use as filling. To the remaining add the flour, butter and vanilla and pulse briefly to form a coarse, crumbly mixture for the topping.

In a bowl, lightly combine the yolks, vanilla and ¼ of the sour cream. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl (or your kitchenaid) combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to combine. Add the butter and remaining sour cream.
Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients have been moistened and then increase to medium speed (high speed if using a hand mixer) and beat for 1 ½ min. Scrape down the sides as needed.

Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition and scraping the sides each time.

Remove from the mixer and use a spatula to fold the batter a few times, making sure that the very bottom and the sides all incorporate evenly. Reserve about 1/3 of the batter and scrape the rest into the prepared pan. Smooth the surface with a spatula—this is a thick cake batter and will require smoothing.

Sprinkle with the prepared streusel filling and then layer the fruit over that.
Dollop the rest of the batter into blobs over the apples slices and smooth it out with a spatula if you can, mine was too thick so I just left it in blobs which looks cooler anyway. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the top of the cake.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

This is one of my first fondant attempts all by myself and I am super happy with how it turned out (except for the colors, more on that below). It is a four layer cake and has a white chocolate mouselline buttercream in between all layers and on the outside. The fondant is a mix of vanilla and almond. I was meant to stripe the layers but got distracted when I was assembling the cake, hahaha FAIL.

I didn’t have anywhere near enough time and as such my colors are not what I would like them to be but hey hey its here. I cut out the corner slice to take a photo and the cake is SO GOOD. So moist and rich and flavourful – and it has been in plastic for 3 days already because I knew I wouldn’t have time – how right I was!

Crap tons of photos to follow

I was working from home today – by that I mean I was feeling like crap so I did 2/3rds of a day in bed on my laptop I was so drawn to the bottle of rosewater that has been in my cupboard for a long time I just had to make something.

So here it is. A vanilla rosewater cake, with a ground pistachio filling and a sweet rosewater glaze. The glaze tastes like roses, pretty amazing but I made it too runny and I don’t like how the photos have turned out. Oh well. I’m sure the recipient of my cake will be happy tomorrow.

Will stick up the other pics tonight