Macadamia nuts make a rich tea cake

A macadamia nut tea cake for your valentine…

Last week I posted about our Miss Hawaii, in particular, how macadamia nuts with their low omega-6 offer a treasure chest of healthy, stable  fats for your dining pleasure.

Now, as promised, here is a recipe to try, featuring macadamia nuts and their oil. It’s called a tea cake in the British sense of the word. It’s more like the scones typically served as part of an English tea than it is a cake in the American sense. But it’s tasty on its own or, if you can afford the calories, you can dress up your own slice with a heaping spoonful of clotted cream and low-sugar jam.

This cake is full of good nutrition and comes in at just under 200 calories a serving, all this with less than 5 grams sugar if you use stevia. If you opt for the full half cup sugar instead of stevia, you add 10 more grams of sugar to each serving and 40 more calories.

Regardless of how you sweeten it, this cake serves up an excellent dose of fiber and protein, lots of B vitamins and healthy minerals, and tons of the rarer omega-9s plus some omega-3 fats. Bonus: it looks pretty and tastes even better. If you have a heart-shaped pan like I do, cook this one up for Valentines day.

I used mangoes on my tea cake here

Apple yogurt tea cake with macadamia nut oil

• 1 cup low-fat Greek yogurt
• 2 cups (8 ounces or 200 grams) whole-wheat pastry flour*
• 1/3  cup macadamia nut oil (store nuts and their oils in the fridge for longer shelf life)
• 1/2 cup sugar or the equivalent of stevia**
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract or the seeds of a vanilla bean
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs

To decorate

• 2 small red apples or a medium mango, finely sliced
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 5 or 6 macadamia nuts, crushed, to garnish

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
2. In a bowl, combine yogurt, oil, sweetener, vanilla and eggs. Whisk until well combined.
3. In another bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder and bicarb.
4. Add flour mixture to yogurt mixture. Stir until combined, but don’t stir it too much. Just enough.
5. Then pour it into a round cake tin lined with baking paper, around 24 cm in diameter.
6. Arrange the fruit slices in two circles on the surface of the batter. Brush with milk and sprinkle over cinnamon, the extra sugar, and the grated macadamia nuts.
7. Bake for around thirty to forty minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Tea cake with apples and lemon curd

Notes:

*      I didn’t have enough whole-wheat flour so I used about 1/3 cup quinoa flakes to make up the full 2 cups the recipe calls for. I get the flakes in my local health food store and always have them on hand. They add protein with no discernible taste.

**    For a sweetener, I used 1/4 cup of a product called “spoonable stevia sugar.” The result? Delicious! Of course, this product is a processed food and contains a filler. Some people avoid it for this reason. I like it better than pure stevia, though, because it’s so hard for me control the tiny amounts called for with the pure powder. The science to date has cleared the filler as safe.

Macadamia is a pearl of a nut. Make it a part of your regular menus and give your heart a boost.

Related

• Miss Macadamia takes the crown – A clear explanation of what makes one fat healthier than another one. Its all about the chemistry. And Macadamias have among the healthiest of fats.
• Tea for two – Serve your sweety some heart-healthy green tea with you tea cake.
• Where’s Walnuts? – Check this out for Verse 4 in my nutty soliloquy, a super reason to make walnuts a part of your regular meal plans.

Macadamia nut tea cake, moist and healthy