Have your gluten free walnut cake and eat it too.

Packed with protein, omega 3s, and antioxidants, walnuts are an excellent source of energy. Their rich flavor also makes them perfect to bake with. And why wouldn’t you want to bake a cake entirely out of walnuts? Enter the Fig and Coconut Walnut Cake.

This dense cake was inspired by a recipe in a recent issue of Bon Appetit, but with a few tweaks it quickly turned into a gluten and dairy free version. Add in figs, coconut and chocolate and you have a cake that’s just as good for breakfast as it is for dessert.

Fig and Coconut Walnut Cake

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cups raw walnuts
• 1/3 cup buckwheat flour
• 3/4 cup almond meal
• 1/3 cup vanilla sugar (place a vanilla bean in a jar of sugar and store in your pantry for easy use)
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup dried figs, chopped
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon powdered ginger
• 1/4 cup shredded coconut + a couple of tablespoons for covering bottom of cake pan

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F.

Put walnuts in food processor and chop coarsely. Remove 1 cup and set aside in a bowl.

Add buckwheat, almond meal, salt and ginger to the remaining walnuts in the food processor and mix until well blended.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar together. Note: if you don’t have vanilla sugar, add in a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

In a saucepan, melt the coconut oil. Combine with sugar and eggs and mix in coconut milk.

Add in walnut, buckwheat and almond meal mixture along with the shredded coconut and chocolate chips and mix all ingredients together.

Fold in the remaining cup of chopped walnuts.

Put a tablespoon of coconut oil in a cake pan (I use a 9″ quiche dish) and place in oven until coconut oil is melted. Make sure the bottom of dish is completely greased and sprinkle a layer of shredded coconut. Pour in batter and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until edges of cake are lightly browned.

The post Sunday Recipe: Fig and Coconut Walnut Cake appeared first on EcoSalon.

There they sit in their dusky purple or light green glory. So sweet, so soft, so decadent. Figs. Figs have two short seasons: July and late September”¦ so get them while you can.

They are special because they don’t travel well, don’t last long and their season is short, so I’m always tempted to buy them.

But, once I get them home, I tend to fall back on the same old variations of easy appetizers. Sometimes I’ll stuff them with blue cheese and top them with toasted nuts. Or maybe I’ll stuff them with goat or cream cheese and wrap them in prosciutto. Both are worthy, but not too exciting.

But figs are much more versatile than you might think. They are great with creamy sweet things like ice cream and yogurt for dessert, and the classic prosciutto pairing proves their worth in savory dishes.

Here are a few recipes from the web to get your fig creativity flowing.

The usual fig pairing suspect, prosciutto, makes an appearance here in this arugula salad with Parmesan and figs from Epicurious.

This article in Seattle PI offers a host of ideas, but the one I’m interested in is the Fettuccine with Lemon, Rosemary, and Fresh Figs.

And from Simply Recipes, we have a super simple Fig Galette for dessert. This would be wonderful garnished with a little crème fraîche.

Image: David Nikon vs. Canon

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