Choose Your Own Adventure Cake

This week’s recipe is brought to you by Alexx Stuart.

Everyone needs an easy, go to, crowd-pleasing cake. From tea and cake in the afternoon with the mum-in-law, to kids lunch box filler, to being able to serve warm with custard as a dinner party dessert or use for a decadent French toast – this little beauty does it all.

It’s easy on the digestion with no gluten or grains and low to no fructose. Buckwheat is a gluten free fruit related to rhubarb, with easily digestible protein and B vitamins. Coconut flour is a high fibre, dense flour derived from coconut flesh. The butter and eggs added to the mix make this cake a great, nourishing treat for grown ups and kids alike.

What’s the ‘choose your own adventure’ part you ask? Read on.

 

What you’ll need:

3 whole eggs

80ml melted butter, ghee or coconut oil

150g rice syrup (if you’re not fructose free, feel free to use 120ml honey)

30g coconut flour

80g buckwheat flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla bean powder or 2 tsp liquid extract

1 tsp aluminum free baking powder (Bob’s Red Mill is a great brand)

 

And then your choice of:

80g 85% chocolate, roughly chopped

1 over-ripe banana, finely chopped

80g frozen raspberries or blueberries, melted with 1 tblsp rice syrup for 5 minutes on the stove

80g super finely chopped sweet red apple

40 dried cranberries

 

What I love about approaching baking this way, is that you can commit one base recipe to memory and change up the added little treat to keep it interesting – it’s as if you’re the master of 5 cake recipes! Shhh, they’ll never know!

 

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Melt your butter on a very low gentle heat then turn heat off, and allow to cool.
3. Wet bowl: Beat your eggs and rice syrup for 2 minutes until you can see lots of air bubbles. Use an electric beater.
4. Dry bowl: Put your 2 flours in, baking powder, cinnamon and vanilla (if it’s the powder. If you’re using extract, then it should be in the wet bowl) and mix through well.
5. Add your butter to your wet bowl now that it’s a little cooler and stir through gently.
6. Combine both bowls and let stand for one minute. It will thicken.
7. Now, add your flavour choice from above, just stirring in roughly with the spoon.
8. Pop into a baking paper lined loaf tin, muffin cups or an 18x24cm baking dish for a cake about an inch high. Bake for 25-40 minutes, depending on oven and cake tin size. Basically, just keep an eye and do the skewer test. It will come out clean when ready.
9. It’s a sturdy number, so you could bake several batches for birthday cakes and layer with cream, cover with icing and decorate for parties too. Enjoy this nourishing, digestible delight that’s kind to your liver – although with a selling pitch like that, you might not even try to make it! Eat it warm from the oven for the ultimate treat. Too delicious!