Hazelnut chocolate torte

Hazelnut is my favourite nut in desserts. I love the sweet and nutty taste of it and the crunch it lends to biscuits and cakes.

Last summer, ahead of a couple of friends visiting me to see my new-ish home, I made this hazelnut chocolate torte to go with teas.

Hazelnut chocolate torte

Peanut butter cake

This is a peanut butter cake I made by frosting a yellow cake with peanut butter cream cheese. I've written about the yellow cake, adapted from a wonderful recipe I found in Dr William Davis's 'Wheat Belly Cookbook'. 

Peanut butter cake

Chocolate-frosted yellow cake

While I wouldn't call myself a cake lover, I do occasionally find myself hankering for cake. And that was what happened two weeks ago. I desperately wanted a slice of moist, dense, and fluffy cake. Being swamped at work and not really having an idea of how to make a wheat-free version, I picked up a toffee cake from the shops. While it tasted alright (not amazing, mind you), I paid for it with several days of discomfort and then more. And still, my craving wasn't satisfied.

So I bit the bullet and bought myself a coffee grinder so I could grind up golden linseeds as they seem to be called in several wheat-free, grain-free recipes. And boy, was I glad I did! Not only did the grinder work a treat for the linseeds, I also managed to make icing sugar without cornstarch with it, which was needed to make the frosting for my cake.

The cake I chose to make was a chocolate-frosted yellow cake. I came across a recipe for it in Dr William Davis's 'Wheat Belly Cookbook'. The cookbook has a good variety of recipes and is easy to use once you have the basic ingredients at hand. The wheat-free cakes I'd made so far were mostly loaf cakes so I wanted to try something new and a yellow cake looked like a good choice as it was versatile. I also wanted to try another kind of frosting (using something other than coconut cream/milk).

Chocolate-frosted yellow cake

Spiced banana cake with coconut cinnamon frosting

Whenever there are super ripe bananas at home, I tend to make banana bread. But this time I decided to mix things up and use them to make a spiced banana cake. This is an impromptu recipe so no doubt tweaking is required.

Madeira cake with coconut & lime frosting

One of the cakes I discovered after moving to Ireland was Madeira cake. I was told it was a sponge but I thought it felt slightly denser than the sponge I was used to back in the East (like the 'traditional' birthday cakes in Taiwan). Still, Madeira cake became my favourite tea cake.