So I guess what we have here is a flourless cake, which is a term I am not so keen on. We tend, as bakers to become too bogged down with wheaten flour and our view of cake has narrowed so much, that said, the recent move towards gluten and grain free flours heartens me and the more we, as a baking collective, widen our ingredient choices, the happier my little nutritionist-in-training heart will be.
That nutritionist-in-training heart is pretty chuffoed with this recipe. It must be faced, most of us, myself included, do not want to live a fully wholesome life, we like sugar and fat and cheese twisties, if we didn't we wouldn't see so much of these things in the supermarket. My aim is to develop more enhanced nutrition, an extra boost in the everyday, well, if you follow this blog or my instant gram you would know this already. Enough soap box! On to the recipe.
A word before we start, I never, ever put up a recipe without multiple tests and some standardisation of ingredients, measurements to weights, timing the cooking time, etc. BUT, in this case I am making an exception as my middle tadpole has asked for the recipe, so here it is, but it is in its embryonic form yet, once I have thoroughly tested it I will come in and tweak, that said this was YUM! I had two pieces after dinner yesterday and there is very little left. This is a small cake, I used a 7 1/2 inch springform tin, if you only have a larger one it will be a bit flatter and will cook a lot quicker.
Doesn't that look magnificent? And very delicious too, in this case, simple is definitely the best.
Ingredients
4 eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups almond meal
2 tablespoons coconut flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
2 medium or about 1 cup grated zucchini
zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon
soft icing mixture or icing sugar
Preheat oven to 170 degrees C fan forced or 180 degrees if your oven is not fan forced. Line the bottom of your springform tin with baking paper, this is extra important when baking grain free cakes, which are more fragile than wheaten cakes and love nothing better than to stick to the pan and tear themselves to pieces when you try to turn them out.
In a large bowl place the eggs, brown sugar, olive oil and vanilla, give it a good bash about with a whisk until well combined, don't bother trying to cream it unless you are trying to work out your arm muscles, this is a very dense cake and it will not care how much you whisk it, it will be the same. In a separate bowl combine your almond meal, coconut flour, salt and baking powder, add that to the egg mix, stir in. Give the grated zucchini a good squeeze and then add that to the cake mix, stir in, decant to your baking tin, into the preheated oven, bake for about 35 minutes or until golden and puffed and a skewer comes out clean, if it starts to brown too quickly (mine did) lower the heat by 10 degrees. Remove from oven, allow to cool in the tin for about ten minutes and then run a knife around the inside of the tin walls to make sure no grabby hands are hiding and then loosen the sides, turn out the cake. Allow to cool fully on a cake rack before transferring to a plate to ice.
For the icing, this is very much a how thick do you want it icing. If you want a drizzle, add a little icing sugar, I used a grain free (most of them are) soft icing mixture, and I wanted a stiffish mix, so I probably added about 3/4 of a cup to my half a lemon of juice and zest, and again, this will depend on your lemon, so just add enough icing sugar to your juice and zest until the icing is the way you want it, pour or spread it onto the top of your cake and there you go. Enhanced cake. MMMMMMMM!
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