There’s a bit of a pattern to my cake recipe. I only really have one recipe – but I change the flours, nuts, fruit and essences so I call it “One cake, 100 ways”.
Over the years I’ve tried using normal flour, buckwheat, brown and white spelt. My favourite is white spelt. I now also change out at least half the flour amount to be ground nuts. Usually ground Almonds. Especially since I bought 3 KG of organic ground almonds from Goodness Direct.
What you’ll need
180g unsalted butter chopped into small cubes, room temp
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
2 cups almond meal
1 cup white spelt flour
1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts
3 tsp baking powder
Seeds of 10 cardamom pods, finely ground or finely chopped
1/2- 3/4 cup milk (enough to make the mix moist)
3 bananas, sliced into rounds
Sugar for sprinkling
How to make
Heat oven to 180°C
In a big bowl, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract until the butter is pale and fluffy. This takes me about 10-15 minutes using an electric hand mixer.
Chop or grind the cardamom seeds until they’re as fine as you can get them.
Break 3 eggs into a mug and slowly add, one at a time to the butter mix, whilst still beating. Once you’ve added all 3 eggs keep beating another minute or so. You really must add the eggs slowly and one at a time and beat well or the mixture may appear to curdle a bit. Although if it does don’t worry too much. I’ve done it loads of times and the cake is still ok.
In a separate bowl put the almond meal, spelt flour, walnuts, cardamom and baking powder. Mix well with a wooden spoon to ensure the baking powder is evenly mixed in. Add flour mix to the butter and egg mix.
Then add the milk and beat on a low speed until the ingredients are just mixed together.
This is the cake base mix complete. We will be using it again in future recipes (some, minus the cardamom – others with different flour, nut, fruit and chocolate options).
Grease a 12″ tart tin with butter and line with baking paper. You need to ensure the baking paper comes up high above the edges as the tart will rise! I usually put a baking sheet under the tin in case of any slight overflow.
Pour the cake mix into the lined cake tin and spread evenly with a spatula.
Arrange the banana slices on the top of the cake and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until golden brown.
The cake is ready when you slide a knife into the centre and it comes out with only very small traces of cake mix. This cake is usually very moist.
Leave to cool for 20 minutes. Then remove from tin and place on a rack to cool further. Once cooled remove the baking paper.
Serve warm or cold with a dollop of natural yoghurt.
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