Loaded with fresh, grated apple, juicy sweet sultanas, roast pecan nuts and desiccated coconut, this fabulous, moist, healthy, gluten and dairy free loaf cake is lightly sweetened with a maple syrup, and warming, sweet cinnamon.
Makes 1 x 900g/2lb lined loaf tin or 2 x 450g/1lb loaf tins.
Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.
Preheat oven to fan oven 160°C/180°C/350°F/Gas 4
Roast the pecan nuts for 8 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Melt the coconut oil, either in the microwave or, melt in a saucepan over a moderate heat on the hob. Set aside to cool whilst you collect and prepare the remaining ingredients.
Peel core and grate the apples.
When cooked, roughly chop the pecan nuts.
Add the yoghurt, eggs, maple syrup and vanilla extract to the oil and mix well with a balloon whisk.
Now fold the flour, cinnamon, cardamom, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and desiccated coconut into the wet ingredients, until nearly mixed in.
Finally add the grated apple, chopped nuts and sultanas and fold in.
Transfer the mixture to either one 900g/2lb lined loaf tin or two 450g/1lb loaf tins. I like to decorate mine with some sliced apple and pecan nuts before baking.
Bake in the centre of a pre-heated oven until cooked. Around 50 – 60 minutes, for the smaller size and around 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes for the larger size.
Leave in the tin for 10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Serve: delicious served as is, but also wonderful spread with your favourite butter – be it cow’s butter, goat’s butter or your favourite nut butter.
Equipment:
Can this be a vegan cake?
If you don’t eat eggs, you can easily replace them with flax eggs and you have a wonderful vegan cake, which is also gluten free, with no processed sugar.