Tag: cake

Baking with Banana Flour

Todays post is about baking with banana flour.

After doing the research on banana flour last week, I thought I would find and trial an easy recipe. It appears that you can substitute banana flour directly for wheat flour in your baking. The flour has a texture similar to lighter wheat flours and requires about 25% less volume.

The flour has similar baking characteristics to wheat flour, but is 100% gluten free, which makes it a perfect choice for coeliacs, people with gluten intolerance or those trying to avoid wheat. It’s readily available in the health food section of the supermarket.

Due to the high resistant starch content of the flour, you tend to eat less of whatever you cook with it, as a small amount tends to be filling.

I baked 3 different cakes with the banana flour to determine which recipe to share with you. I chose the chocolate cake one as it has the least ingredients and is usually the most popular.

Banana Flour Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

1 cup Green Banana Flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons of cacao powder

½ cup maple syrup (or rice malt)

140 grams melted butter (or oil of your choice)

½ cup of milk (type of your choice)

½ cup water

2 eggs

Method
  • Preheat oven to 180’ C and prepare your baking tin (I used a 20cm loaf tin)
  • In a large mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder and cacao
  • Add melted butter, syrup, milk, water and eggs mixing well.
  • Pour batter into tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean (or slightly tacky for a moister cake).
  • Allow to cool completely before removing from tin.

** On my first attempt the cake was a little dry so for the second one I followed this tip I found. Very happy with the result.

Cooking Tip – Cook the cake for ½ of the time uncovered as usual and then cover with foil for the remaining time.

I hope you enjoy your baking experience.

Till the next post,

Live clean n Prosper

Orange and Coconut Cake

Today I’m sharing an Orange and Coconut Cake recipe.

We have so many oranges that we have harvested from our tree, I decided to use some in a cake.

After all, they are very healthy as researched for my last post. This is another way to make use of this lovely fruit.

I have a recipe for a Coconut and Raspberry Loaf that is really delicious, so I thought that it would easily be adapted to use oranges instead. This recipe is also gluten free with the use of Coconut flour.

The result is really yummy. I really like how the zest gives the cake a lovely colour.

 Orange and Coconut Cake

Ingredients

1 cup coconut flour

½ cup desiccated coconut

1 tsp baking powder or bicarbonate of soda

Zest of 1 orange – finely grated and chopped

4 eggs

1 cup buttermilk (or ¾ cup plain yoghurt & ¼ cup milk)

½ cup honey (or other liquid sweetener) I used rice malt syrup

60g butter – melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

1½ cups chopped orange flesh

 Method

* Preheat oven to 170

* Grease and line a loaf tin with baking paper

* Combine coconut flour, desiccated coconut, baking powder and orange zest in a mixing bowl.

* In another bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, butter, honey and vanilla. When well combined, pour the mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients and mix well.

* Fold in the chopped orange flesh.

* Pour the mix into the loaf tin and smooth the top.

Bake for approximately 1 hour or until cooked. Test with a skewer.

Let the cake cool for at least 10 minutes before removing it from the tin onto a rack to cool.

I hope you enjoy this cake as much as we do.

 Till the next post,

 Live clean n prosper.