By Nic Midgley
This is a delicious dessert developed by my friend Sneh Roy, Sydney based food stylist, recipe developer and blogger at A Cook Republic. I have been following Sneh’s food adventures for more than a decade and love her tasty, mostly plant based recipes. For this version of her nut crumble and rye cake, I have taken it one step further and adapted the ingredients to make it vegan.
Whilst I cannot profess that this is a “healthy” dessert, it is healthier than your average cake. I use wholemeal spelt instead of plain flour, adding more nutrients such as fibre, and I have used panela instead of regular sugar. Panela is less processed than regular sugar, does not contain any chemicals, and because it is less processed, retains some nutrients.
Ingredients for the cake
2 tablespoons of flax meal
5 tablespoons of water
100g coconut oil (solid at room temperature)
100g panela
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
125g rye flour
80g wholemeal spelt flour
60g almond meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
250ml almond milk
Ingredients for the crumble
50g coconut oil, melted
80g coconut sugar
2 tablespoons wholemeal spelt flour
50g walnuts, chopped
50g whole almonds, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and grease and line a round, 20cm springform cake tin.
Start by making the flax egg. Mix the flax meal and water together in a bowl and leave to stand for a few minutes to thicken.
In a stand mixer, combine the sugar and coconut oil. Mix until there are no visible lumps of coconut oil left. This can be done by hand in a mixing bowl, but it takes more effort to remove all of the lumps.
Add the flax egg, salt and vanilla paste and keep mixing until combined.
Add both flours and almond meal, baking powder and cardamom and continue to mix. Finally, add the almond milk and mix until you have a smooth batter.
To make the crumble mixture, melt the coconut oil, and combine with all of the other ingredients.
Pour half of the cake batter into the base of your lined tin and sprinkle with half of the crumble mixture. Spoon the rest of the cake batter into the tin and top with the remaining crumble mixture. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 40 minutes until the cake is firm.
Cool slightly before releasing from the tin. I like to serve this cake warm from the oven with a dollop of coconut yoghurt, but if you can resist eating it, it also tastes great the next day.