Fig Almond & Honey Cake with Fennel Seeds
A gorgeous sweet enough (but not too sweet) cake that’s easy to make while celebrating the first seasons organic figs. A wonderful gluten-free cake that is deliciously sweetened with raw honey, buttery ghee and ripe figs.
A delight!
Why you should make this cake:
- its easy to make
- it has no gluten-free flour blends (see below)
- its made with wholefood ingredients
- its keeps easily for 3-5 days in the fridge
- its not overly sweet
- you can definitely have it for breakfast!
March in Cape Town signals the start of the fig season and this year I really want to make the most of the seasons ripe plump figs. I somehow find myself each fig season with a disappointing feeling that I did not bake or cook enough with the seasons bounty.
So, what better way to showcase their sweetness than to bake them filled in a cake spiked with fennel seeds and desiccated coconut?
Baking with nut/grain flours
My husband has an intolerance to gluten, its sucks because as an Englishman he loves nothing more than buttered toast and a big slice of afternoon cake! Let’s face it, finding really good gluten-free cake & bread alternatives is hard. As a wholefoods chef I have to roll my eyes every time I see the 101 ingredients needed to bake something not even decent.
In a quest to fill our home with bakes he (and me) can actually enjoy – I tend to prefer baking with nut and grain flours. When I say nut & grain flour, I actually just mean, whizzing whole nuts into a flour, it’s really that easy.
How to make wholefood flours
Oat and most nuts can be made into a flour by whizzing them up fine enough to make a flour. All you need is a high-speed blender, like a NutriBullet and you can make your own flour in no time. If using a NutriBullet you would need to whizz the flour in batches to ensure it’s fine enough.
Worth noting that if you leave any nut to whizz up too finely – you will end up, eventually, with a nut butter, but whizzing for 30 seconds at a time would be all you need to make a flour.
Level up your flours by toasting them
Here’s a fact – ANYTHING in your kitchen will taste better when roasted and seeds or grains are no different.
- I roast whole almonds in the oven on 180c for 5-7min or until I can smell them toasting.
- I toast my oats as above until golden and then blitz to a fine flour.
- I toast my desiccated coconut (or flaked coconut) too.
Any excess flour or coconut can be kept in the fridge for freshness.
A note on ‘fluffy’ cakes
The trade off with baking with whole ingredients and grainy textured flours are that the cake is not in the Victoria sponge, fluffy category, rather, it’s more in the cakes-you-can-have-for-breakfast category.
They are denser but in a good way.
Easy swaps
Change the fruit according to what’s in season.
Fig, Honey & Fennel Cake
Equipment
- 23cm loaf-tin
- High Speed Blender if making own flour
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp fennel seeds (more to sprinkle)
- 2 cups (220g) almond flour (from 2 cups almonds, toasted and whizz to a four, see recipe intro )
- 1/4 cup oat flour (toasted and the blitzed, see recipe intro)
- 1/4 cup desiccated almonds (toasted, opt)
- 1 tsp baking powder aluminium-free if available
- pinch salt
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil/ghee (melted)
- 2 large eggs room temperature, whisked
- 1/2 cup (120ml) raw honey (more for glazing the warmed cake, opt)
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract not essence
- 1/4 tsp almond extract (opt)
- 10 ripe figs stemmed and cut in half lengthwise
- fresh cream of creme fraiche to serve
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180c and line a 23cm rectangular loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
- Roast the fennel seeds in a small frying pan (no oil, only dry) until toasted, grind in a mortar and pestle to a fine powder.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together, ie the almond flour, oat flour, desiccated coconut, baking powder, ground fennel and pinch of salt.
- In another bowl mix the wet ingredient together, the honey, olive oil, vanilla, almond extract and eggs, until well incorporated.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture and stir with a spatula until just combined and no dry ingredients are visible. Think swirling a figure of 8 into the batter rather than whisking.
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and spread evenly, especially into the corners.
- Arrange the figs, cut side up, over the top and sprinkle with a few fennel seeds.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake is golden on top and a cake skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and set on a rack to cool for at least 10 minutes before removing the cake (baking paper and all) from the pan. Why? Because a warm cake is a fragile cake and it can break easily in half when lifted out of the tin.
- At this stage you can gently brush some fresh honey over the warmed cake to create a beautiful glaze, completely optional.
- Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with a dollop of good creme fraiche or ever so slightly whipped fresh cream and fresh figs on the side.
- The cake can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days (chances are it won't last that long!). Enjoy!
