A Berry Oat Cake for the Birthday Girl

It’s my birthday today! To celebrate the magic of the big 3-1, allow me to share a recipe for a sort-of-healthy birthday cake. Full disclaimer: I doubt I will actually bake this cake for my birthday today. I’ll probably be lazy (AGAIN) and let somebody else do the work, if I have cake at all. Chocolate could very well be involved in lieu of cake. My kitchen love affair gets a little cramped in the summer months. 🙂

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I’ve already established how much I enjoy working in the kitchen on this here blog, yes? (I know for a fact I’ve already confirmed what a nut I am when it comes to cooking for road trips, and I’m pretty sure I’ve also demonstrated the peculiar/OCD issues I have with using other people’s kitchen utensils before, so if you’re not convinced of my love for cooking just yet, let’s just pretend that being a compulsive, nutty, non-borrower of other people’s crock pots equals Big Time Kitchen Love.)

I love making things from scratch whenever I can, and I’m also somebody who strives to waste as little as possible, food or otherwise. I’ve been making our own almond milk for over a year now and, after documenting a few initial mishaps (which of course were Freshly Pressed– WordPress loves celebrating failure!), I’ve become a well-oiled machine with the process: Soak almonds. Add water. Blend. Strain. Blend again with vanilla and dates. See? Simple!

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about making almond milk from scratch was having the almond grits left over. What to do with a bunch of soggy almond bits, save for tossing them in the compost bin? I tried making chocolate truffles with them before, but the results were mushy and gross, to put it politely. (I have a serious chocolate addiction and even I didn’t want to eat these truffles, if that says anything.) Anyway. I wanted to do something with the leftover almond curds, but unless I wanted to excel at food failure, it seemed that the compost heap was the only viable option.

Almond grits in all their glory

Enter the Berry Oat Cake.

The recipe for this cake (which is more like a mild afternoon loaf than it is like a hyperactive kid’s birthday cake) secretly came from a “diet” book (sssh!), but given the amount of times I’ve eaten a quarter-plus of a pan in one sitting, I can safely say that I’m not losing any weight from it. 😉 What I like about this recipe– aside from its addictive, not-too-sweet quality– is that I can easily and deliciously incorporate my almond grits into it. So what if I make this cake exactly as frequently as I make almond milk, i.e. weekly? At least I’m not wasting any food by doing it! “Eat up, honey bunches”, I tell my husband when yet another Berry Oat Cake emerges from the oven: “We’re recycling!”

The edible version of “waste not, want not”

(Marty is an eco-warrior, too. He does his bit for the environment by dutifully eating his share of the berry oat cake each week.)

It goes without saying that this cake can be made without soggy almond grits, too. You don’t even have to make it weekly like we do– I’ll just keep my snide judgments about your commitment to recycling/future generations/God’s Green Earth to myself.

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Berry Oat Cake

(revised from the O2 Diet book recipe by Keri Glassman)

You Will Need:

– 1/2 cup finely ground almond meal (or soggy almond grits!)

– 1/2 cup turbinado sugar (looks big and crunchy compared to regular white sugar)

– 1 1/2 cups oat flour, plus 1 Tbsp oat flour (I’ve made this before with spelt flour and it was fine. You could probably even use regular flour if it pleased you.)

– 2 1/2 tsp baking powder

– 1/2 tsp sea salt

– 1 egg (or vegan egg replacement equivalent)

– 1/4 cup high quality cooking oil (canola, etc.)

– 1/2 cup almond milk (or milk of your preference)

– 1 tsp vanilla (I use my homemade extract, obviously)

– 2 cups mixed frozen berries (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries– all of these will work in any combination)

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and lightly grease a square (8″x8″) baking pan.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine almond meal, sugar, oat flour, baking powder, and sea salt.

3. In a small bowl, whisk egg with a fork, then add oil, vanilla, and almond milk.

Whisk together until emulsified and add to dry ingredients. Stir together until combined. Batter will be thick and sticky.

4. In a medium bowl, toss frozen fruit with extra 1 Tbsp oat flour to coat. Stir fruit into cake batter and transfer to square baking pan.

Hey– nobody said it was going to look pretty. Appearances aren’t everything, you know.

5. Bake at 350F for 40-45 minutes, or until golden brown on the top. Makes 9 diet-sized portions (or 2 to 4 “Hungry Man” portions. I won’t judge you if you eat half a pan at once, because I’ve been there before, not to mention last week.)

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Do you have a sweet tooth, dear readers?

    Do you indulge your sweet tooth under the guise of recycling like I do?

Any birthday wishes for yours truly (hint, hint)?