The cake is totally delicious with pecans, but due to nut allergy in our household I had to think of something else for some “crunch”. Normally I opt for sunflower seeds or pepitas, but I wanted something more similar to pecans. So I was lucky enough to find some Loving Earth Chocolate Buckinis (these consisted of whole buckwheat toasted with cacao, cacao butter, Goji berries, Inca berries, coconut, and coconut sugar). Normally Buckinis have nuts, but this version didn’t, and they had just the right amount of crunch. Perfect!
This dough is quite stiff when finally folded together with the wet ingredients, but don’t let that put you off … with the amount of apple in it, the cake will bake up beautifully.
It can be simply served dusted with icing sugar, but for a special treat include thick yoghurt or cream.
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
4 green apples, peeled, cored and cut into small chunks
420g golden caster sugar, or plain caster sugar
420g white spelt flour, or plain flour
2 tsp bi carb soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp sea salt flakes, or 1 tsp fine sea salt
250g pecans, roughly chopped (I used 250g Chocolate Buckinis as nut free option)
Wet Ingredients
2 x 59g eggs
250g melted butter, cooled
2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Grease sides well and line base of a 24cm (base measurement) round cake tin
Preheat oven to 180 degrees fan forced
Mix apples and sugar together
In a large bowl sift together flour, bi carb soda, cinnamon, allspice and sea salt flakes
Add the pecans (or Buckinis) to the flour mix and stir through
Add eggs and vanilla to the cooled melted butter and stir in well with a fork or whisk
Stir wet mix through the apple and sugar mix first, then add this to the dry mix in the large bowl and combine well together
Place batter into cake tin, and as it is quite dense use the back of a spoon to lightly push the mixture into the base ensuring you get mixture into the corners and then lightly level the top
Bake for 1 hour, turn cake around and bake a further 20 minutes, test, then add another 5 to 10 minutes if necessary (it takes exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes in my oven)
Cool cake in tin for 30 minutes before removing to cake rack to cool
Dust with icing sugar and preferably serve warm with thick yoghurt or cream
Recipe by The Passionate Pantry at https://www.thepassionatepantry.com.au/apple-pecan-cake/