Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Madeira Cake - Modifed

Inspired by this recipe, I tried my hand at making Madeira cake. The first time I forgot to add the baking powder as the recipe called for self-rising flour and I used regular all purpose flour. 

The second time I made it I didn't read the recipe carefully as I was working and added the juice of an entire lemon along with the zest and forgot completely to add the sugar. It was awful.

The third time was the charm and it came out exactly right-- sweet and tasty and a delicious recipe.

That said, it was pretty sweet.  Also I've been working on ways to help my vegetarian housemate get more Omega3s in her diet and one of the ways has been to add ground flax seed to dishes she eats. The flax seed can add a nice nutty taste to things which I thought would go nicely with this cake.

I changed the almonds in the original to walnuts, again to improve the Omega3 content and also because I thought they might meld nicely with the flax seed and with the banana that I swapped in for some of the sugar and some of the butter.

This may be drifting closer to banana bread, but it came out tasting better than any banana bread I have ever tried to make.

Ingredients
  • 115g softened butter
  • 1 (~95g) banana, peeled, very ripe
  • 115g caster sugar
  • 30 g flax seed, ground/milled
  • 225g all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 50g ground walnuts
  • 4 large free-range eggs
  • 1 med unwaxed lemon, zest only
  • (Optional: 2 tsp Grand Marnier)
Instructions
  • Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. 
  • Line a bread loaf pan with baking parchment
  • Warm the butter until soft and set aside (melted butter also works).
  • Grind the walnuts in food processor or chop very fine with a knife
  • Zest the lemon
  • Add the eggs to the lemon zest and whisk until the eggs are throughly beaten
  • Mix the banana, sugar, flax seed, flour, baking powder and walnuts together until well combined
  • Add the egg/lemon mixture and butter and stir until just mixed
  • Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for a total of 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
  • Leave to set in the pan for a further 15 minutes
  • Move to a wire rack to cool completely
Variations:
  1. Swap the lemon zest for orange zest.
  2. Use a combination of 65 g avocado, 50 g butter and bake at 320F for 60-70 minutes



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