A healthy cake?........{Lemon & Chia Seed Cake}

My friends! Apologies for the absence, I have been sunning myself in Italy and eating lots of yummy Italian food. Seriously was the best holiday and I have the holiday blues now I am back! I promise to do a holiday recap soon but until them I have a little recipe to keep you going!

Lemons are such a summery fruit to me and I use them a lot in my cooking and especially in my baking. This cake always goes down a treat and by replacing the fat with yogurt and olive oil and the sugar with algave syrup I also like to consider it a little bit healthy?! When I make this as a pudding, I make the limoncello syrup to serve with it but you can omit this if you only want it as a teatime treat! 

Lemon & Chia Seed Cake 

(Serves 6 with plenty left over for seconds!)


4 large eggs 
175g full fat Greek yoghurt
110g plain flour
110g ground almonds 
50g Chia seeds (or you can use poppy seeds)
1 ½ TSP baking powder 
½ TSP salt
10 TBSP Algave syrup
50ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 lemon – zest of whole lemon, juice of half
1 TSP vanilla extract

5 TBSP caster sugar
Zest and Juice of ½ lemon 
50 – 75ml limoncello  

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a loaf tin with grease proof paper. Mix together the flour, almonds, chia seeds, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl pour in the syrup and add in lemon zest. In another bowl whisk together yogurt, eggs and vanilla and then add the lemon juice – keep whisking until it’s all combined. Stir in the zest and syrup. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix together. Fold in the Olive oil. Pour the mixture into the tin and smooth down the top. Bake for 50mins until top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool.

Warm the sugar, zest and lemon juice over a low heat until syrup if formed. Remove from heat and whilst still warm stir in the limoncello. Use a skewer and make a few holes across the top of the cake and then pour over some of the syrup and reserve the rest for serving alongside the cake. It also goes well with a little glass of limoncello! 

Let them have cake........ Autumn style cake

My first attempt at photo editing!

Autumn is, it's really hard to miss it in blog world, I'm embracing it all - i love autumn.  One of my favourite scents that reminds me of my favourite season is cinnamon.......... and then that leads me on to Apples! Because Apples and Cinnamon are as perfect for one another as Salt n Pepper (Group or seasoning you wonder). In the past I’ve always gone for my favourite Autumn double act in puddings such as pie and crumble but I decided they would work perfectly in a cake. I did quite a bit of research across the tinternet and found all kinds of variations which included golden syrup and cream cheese in the ingredients list?! All that inspiration and here’s my own little recipe I came up with. It’s lovely and moist and crumbly and best served warm from the oven with a glug of cream…. Autumn on a plate

Apple and Cinnamon Cake

275g self-raising flour
125g butter, diced and best straight from the fridge

125g cinnamon sugar (if you don’t have this just use caster or light brown sugar with two tsp. of ground cinnamon

2 medium eggs (beaten)
6-8 tbsp. milk
2 - 3 Bramley apples, peeled, cored and diced (granny smith would work here as well and maybe Golden delicious
2 handfuls of sultanas or as many – little as you want
Demerara sugar (optional)

 Preheat oven to 180C/ 160C fan and grease a cake tin (you can line it as well but I didn’t bother – I am a lazy baker).

Put flour into bowl (I didn’t bother sieving, again Lazy baker me) Add butter and rub until it looks like breadcrumbs, as if you were making a crumble.

 

Stir in the cinnamon sugar. Beat in egg and combine. You want to achieve a smooth thick batter and so add as many tablespoons of milk it takes. Then add in your apple and sultanas and make sure it’s all combined. Dollop into your tin and level it out. Sprinkle a layer of  Demerara sugar over (this will add a lovely crunchy topping to your cake.

 

Bake for around 40 mins, I checked mine after 30 with my knife and it defo needed those extra 10 minutes. Let it cool down a little, I think I lasted about 5 minutes before I had to get it out of the tin and serve it up to my hungry housemates!

 

P.S Your whole house will be filled with lovely cinnamon and apple scents when you bake this, it’s rather lovely and homely perfect when you’re home and its cold and wet outside. I LOVE British weather

Whilst cooking this cake I listened to Seasons of love from the fabulous musical Rent and a bit of David Grey including Babylon and This year’s Love (I have to be chilled when baking)