Earlier this week we made a delicious cake to take for dessert to some friends’ place. It was adapted from several different recipes to fit what we already had in our pantry, and for altitude. I will include the recipe here, with un-adaptions for those not at altitude!
It is dairy-free, but full of nuts!
Cinnamon and almond cake
12-16 servings
1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 teas baking powder (1 1/2 for altitude)
2 pinches salt
1 cup sugar
2 teas vanilla essence
1/2 cup water (+ 2 extra tablespoons for altitude)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup (40g) whole almonds, processed or chopped until fine
2 teas cinnamon
Nut topping
1/2 cup (80g) almonds, chopped finely
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 teas cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
Grease 22cm/8.5in square cake tin.
Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into mixing bowl. Add sugar, nuts and mix well. Add vanilla, water, vegetable oil and eggs. Mix everything together until smooth (you can do this with a whisk – you don’t even need an electric mixer).
Put in greased, floured tin. Bake until skewer comes out clean, approx 35-45 minutes.
Cool in pan for 10-15 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack.
Nut topping
Wet nuts slightly. Mix with sugar and cinnamon. Spread mixture onto foil on oven tray. Bake until nuts are dry. Peel off foil and crumble.
Brush warm cake with butter/margarine and sprinkle with nut topping.
Eat and savour each mouthful…!
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
That sounds delicious! Will let you know how the non-altitude version goes tomorrow! You can never have enough nuts and we’re dairy free too.
Wow! How yummy! I cheated and used packaged almond meal, mostly due to having a 4 year old “helping” me, but will do freshly ground next time. We didn’t have icing sugar so i used caster sugar for the topping and we have leftovers for some toast tomorrow… mmm
Now I’m going to have to try your biscuits…
Glad to hear that it worked! I think that packaged almond meal would be just fine for the cake itself, though I think that chopped almonds are better for the topping – because they’re chunkier in parts. And the biscuits are GOOD too, so do try them!
When we get home, I’d like to try using brown sugar in the cake instead of the white sugar we’ve been using here. Coffee sugar is available here (it is the home of coffee!) but not brown sugar.
But what do you mean that you have left-overs? From what? And why isn’t it already eaten?! I just can’t comprehend having left-overs from this recipe…!
I was going to use brown sugar and made a note to try it next time! I think the chunky bits would be better on top too. My topping was more like an almond cinnamon sugar donut topping so still good and the reason why it will go on some toast tomorrow!
We have leftover cake I think simply because Greg wasn’t home when it came out of the oven! The girls probably could have finished it off except we were out this afternoon and I made them eat their dinner before dessert!
Biscuits will be next Tuesday’s baking session..