0 Spiced apple chickpea cake

Recently I have been experimenting with cake recipes that are naturally gluten free or are made with alternative flours or no flour at all. I have previously dabbled with cakes made with chickpeas and beans previously including one that ended up being featured in The Clandestine Cake club cook book and they turned out well. The gluten free chocolate cake is of particular note , the link is here.

This recipe is based on the same basic recipe but I fancied including grated apples and spices to provide a fruity flavour in place of the chocolate plus I have bought a lot of apples recently as I am also planning on having a go at using apple sauce / puree as a butter alternative in baking so watch out for that post too.

Chickpeas or garbanzo beans (as our friends across the pond call them) are used as the flour substitute yet you still get some rise, the recipe is also lower fat as it has no added oils or butters. The cake is lovely and moist and is great served on its own or as a dessert if served with cream, custard or yogurt. You would never know it contains chickpeas at all, plus it smells amazing whilst baking all cosy and comforting.

What you need

• 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 3 eggs beaten
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp lebucken spice (I used Steenbergs but you can come up with your own spice mix, may be incorporating cinnamon, cloves, ginger or what ever else takes your fancy)
• A couple of cox apples - grated keep the skin on 
• Lemon rind

What you do

• Grease a square cake tin roughly 9" by 9"
• Pre heat your oven to 180C
• Pulse the chickpeas in a food processor until they become a fine paste , now pulse in the rest of the ingredients.
• Pour the mix into your prepared tin, don't be alarmed the mixture will be very runny
• Bake for at least 45 minutes until golden, set and risen. Test with a skewer to make sure its cooked through
• Cool fully on a wire rack
• Cut into squares and store in an airtight tin for a couple of days if it lasts that long

Detail: Spiced apple chickpea cake

0 Cereal loaf cake

On this years schedule for the Lancashire Federation of Womens Institute county show one of the set recipes is a Weetabix cake. I remember this cake from my childhood as one that my Nanna would bake, I think she also did an All bran version too which would give a very similar result. I haven't decided as yet if I am going to enter any of the baking classes and do foray with the local equivalents of Mary Berry but in the meantime I baked this classic to remind me how it tastes. Its a pretty easy recipe and the secret is the soaking of the fruit overnight to ensure that the dried fruit is plump and juicy. There are a myriad versions of this recipe on the internet but I am using the classic supplied by the WI (the measurement is in ounces so its old time for sure).

The cake is better if wrapped for a couple of days as it improves with keeping , its great served plain or buttered.

Ingredients

• 2 weetabix or similar quantity of all bran, bran flakes, etc
• 1/2 pint of milk (I used skimmed)
• 8 oz demerara sugar
• 8 oz mixed dried fruit
• 1 egg - free range
• 8 oz self raising flour
• 1 tsp mixed spice ( this is my embellishment or not to schedule in WI speak)

Method

• Crush the weetabix in a bowl, add the sugar, milk and dried fruit. Stir well and leave to soak overnight
• Add the egg and flour and mix well
• Scoop into a lined 2lb loaf tin
• Bake at 160c for 1 hour or so (mine took 1-20 mins) until tested cooked with a skewer
• Cool on a wire rack

I was recently on BBC Radio Lancashire and took a sample of this loaf in with me and it proved very popular with the presenters.

I have been having a rummage in my old recipe archive some of which has been passed to me by my Mum and have found a couple of postcards with variations on a theme for this recipe in my Nanna's writing.

Detail: Cereal loaf cake