Cardamom coffee cake
What do you think of the aroma of cardamom in desserts? I never knew thought about it as a possibility before visiting India, and it changed my life! During my travel I tastes many dessert with a combination of milk, cardamom, saffron and pistachio together, heaven! If you want to try one of those check my Indian rice pudding recipe.
I made some other research and actually found other dessert recipes with cardamon, even traditional cakes, and I decided to experiment. Not only cardamom makes the taste delicious, it also turns the dessert into a warm and exciting experience. It’s food aromatherapy!
This cardamom coffee cake is a healthier version of the original, because I choose to replace the refined sugar with honey / stevia and use a cashew cream instead of butter and sugar. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
I prepared it for my birthday and shared with my colleagues, I think the result was amazing to please both dessert lovers and healthy food fanatics.
Ingredients:
270 gr gluten-free flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp stevia or 170 gr honey
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 gr teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 large eggs
200 ml coconut milk
100 gr coconut oil
150 ml strong coffee (ideally mocha) at room temperature
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)
Filling/frosting:
200 gr unsalted, raw cashews
125 ml almond milk
2 tbsp honey
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)
1 tsp grounded coffee
Pinch of cardamon
The first thing to do is to prepare the frosting at least 4 hours before the cake is baked. Soak in the cashews in water for at least 4 hours (overnight is also great). Drain and wash the cashews and place them in a blender with the almond milk, honey, coffee, cardamom and vanilla (optional). Blend until smooth and more milk if needed.
Preheat oven to 180 °C (170 degrees if you decided to use honey). Grease a round cake tin and line the bottoms with baking paper.
Take 2 a large bowls, whisk together all the dry ingredients in one and in the other beat all the wet ingredients with an electric mixer for 5 minutes. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
Pour the mix into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. Check with a toothpick if the center comes out clean.
Let cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer the cake into a cooling rack. After the cake has cooled down (30 min to 1 hour later) cut in 2 disks with the help of a cake wire slicer.
Once the disks and the filling are ready, get ready for the final combination! Place one disk on a cake board, spread a thick layer of cashew filling, then place the other disk on top of that. Cover the top with another layer of cashews frosting. If you prefer you can also use a spatula to spread the cream on the sides as well.
TIPS: Top the cake as you prefer, with cardamom pods, edible flowers, coffee beans etc.
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