This was a pleasant surprise. A friend was asking for a banana bread recipe and I felt bad that my site didn’t contain one. While I was trying to come up with a gluten free and sugar free recipe, I started craving chocolate and hazelnut. Not the sugar, palm oil, and soy flavors of Nutella, but the homemade flavors of REAL food.
Thus, I made a banana bread with hazelnut flour, sweetened it with raw honey, and added unsweetened cocoa powder. Voila, I accidentally made a chocolate cake.
We call it a cake because it was so moist and my kids loved it. They couldn’t taste the banana, but they loved the nutty rich flavors. I spread a little butter on our slices (it was supposed to be a bread), but my husband said throw on a frosting and you’d have one heck of a birthday cake.
I don’t have a frosting yet for this recipe, but we’ve considered whipped cream with strawberries, a coconut oil glaze, or a cream cheese frosting like black bottom cupcakes. It doesn’t need much; it’s a rich cake. Then I thought maybe you can hep us find a frosting that would make this a real birthday treat. Share your ideas in the comments below.
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups hazelnut meal (ground hazelnuts)
- 1.5 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed (can use 1 Tbsp hazelnut meal in place of flaxseed)
- 3 pastured eggs
- scant 1/2 cup honey
- 1/4 cup sour cream or coconut cream
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Mix all of the ingredients in a blender or with a mixer
- Grease a 9 inch cake pan or bread loaf pan with butter or coconut oil
- Pour the batter into the pan
- Bake for 1 hour
- Allow to cool before slicing into it.
I wish I could show you the whole cake, but I couldn’t get to it in time. It was gone in a few hours. I can’t tell if it would stick to the pan if it sat for long enough to cool, but I recommend serving this in a pretty dish and frosting it on a special occasion. Enjoy!
