A taste from the outback

We have been doing a lot of cleaning and clearing at the moment, though my house seems tidy over all, we were still amazed at the amount of junks hiding in the cupboard, under the bed, behind the sofas....some of these things are brand new unwanted gifts, some of them were the result of impulse buying, and most of them were just junk that we thought it will be useful so we kept them at the time, but we've never really needed them. Even though husband and I are no haorders, some of the junks were difficult to get rid off, especially those that hold sentimental values, like my engagement and wedding flower bouquet. They have been drying quite nicely, and been sitting on the shelf beside my wedding photos, but even dead and dried flowers have their used by date, and lately they have been deteriorate quite rapidly, and the dried patels began to turn into fine, powdery " ash". Husband have been asking me, no, begging me to get rid of the pile of patel ash, and finally, I had but no choice to put them ( unwillingly ) into the big black plastic bag together with other junks.

My pantry is another place with a lot of hidden junks, and gems. I'm absolutely delighted when I found a jar of wattlseeds sitting nicely behind the many other cans of food inside the pantry. I remember searching high and low for it after I read about these particular spice from a cooking book, and finally bought it from the Essential Ingredients, alas, never used it after!! I was so relieved to find that the use by date is still one long year away, and I swear to myself that I'll use it in my next baking. Wattleseeds are Australia native spice, they are edible seeds from wattle plants dried, and ground. They have very nutty, chocolaty and coffee flavours. It was used by the aboriginals for cooking and making bread and has become quite a popular spice lately because of their distinctive flavour, and can be found quite easily from gourmet food store. Because of their nuttiness, i decided to pair them with the coffee and almond crunch recipe, adapted from the October 2008 issue of Australian Good Food Magazines.


Bush Coffee Crunch Cake

Ingredients for the cake

• 170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 170g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/2 tsp coffee essence
• 100g almond meal
• 1/4 cup strong coffee
• 2/3 cup SR flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp wattleseedes

Ingredients from the crunch topping:

• 60g plain flour
• 40g demerara sugar
• 1/3 cup pecan nuts ( optional )
  
• 40g cold butter, cubed

Methods:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degree Celsius. Line a 20cm round cake pan with baking paper.
2. To make the topping, mix flour and sugar in a bowl, and rub in cold butter until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Put in the fridge while making the cake.
   
3. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, one at a time until all combine. Add in the vanilla and coffee essence. Fold in the almond meal, alternating with half of the the strong coffee.
   
4. Sift the SR flour, wattle seeds and baking powder together, gently fold the flour into the egg mixture, and add the other half of the strong coffee.
   
5. Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Scatter the topping and pecan nuts on top of the cake batter, and bake in the pre heated oven for about 1 hour.
   
6. Remove from oven once cooked, and cool completely on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar before serving.
   

The cake is loaded with heavenly coffee aroma and is very moist with a crunchy nutty toppings. The addition of wattleseeds is wonderful, and gives another layer of nuttiness and mocha flavours to the coffee aroma. It's not overly sweet, and I serve it warm with a dollop of chocolate custard ( ice-cream would have been perfect too! ).



After galloping 2 huge slices of the cake almost all at once, the husband put on a big smile, comforted me and promise me that I can always have fresh bouquet of flowers whenever i like on his credit card, at the same time, he took bags after bags of trash out to the bins. Suddenly, my house is less cluster, and I can see much clearer; it's the man that's should matter, not the moulding wedding flower!!