This latest cake was inspired by two friends: one who shared Honey & Co.’s air fryer cake recipe, and the other who made an orange and cardamom cake for her housewarming party, which was delicious. This drove me to spend a peaceful Sunday afternoon in our kitchen experimenting with ingredients and our air fryer. Our oven has been out of action since the spring, and I have been very slow at sorting out a replacement, even though Christmas is 5 and a bit weeks away and we are hosting…
Baking in the air fryer is not a new thing for me. I have experimented with quite a few recipes with varying degrees of success, generally making things up as I went along
I looked at the apple and cinnamon cake recipe from Honey & Co. and wondered if I could make a version of my own: substituting pears for apples and cardamom for cinnamon. I knew I had a leftover pear from lunch the day before that needed eating, and I knew I wanted to make my own cardamom-style cake. I thought pears and cardamom would go together, as would ginger. I recall making a similar combination in the past.
I have two small 15 cm diameter cake tins and found that the first tin was filled 3/4 full with cake batter, and there was still some left. I somehow did not want to fill this tin to the top, so I put the last bit of batter in the other tin. This meant that I was left with two asymmetrically sized cakes and, by default, a ‘sandwich’, which I would have to fill. I then wondered about making some sort of yoghurt-based filling, as I did not have any double cream and I wasn’t keen on using butter icing. I decided I would make the yoghurt thick by using chia seeds, harking back to what I was doing in the summer for my slow breakfasts
(note to self: that’s not happened for a while…), and adding some cardamom powder as an homage to the cake and a little maple syrup to give a sweet edge and remove some of the tang of the yoghurt.
The result: something quite wonderful…
The cake itself is soft, spongy and sweet, with the perfect level of outer crunch. The yoghurt and chia seeds added a little bit of creamy goodness with added crunch from the seeds.
Now that we are mid-November and the weather is miserable, this was the perfect accompaniment for me with my latest Netflix obsession.
It was also a lovely, comforting, slow ‘breakfast’ for me while working at home.
I made a second cake, just because 😼, while working from home during my lunch break. A nice pause from endless the reports and phone calls. A nice accompaniment to the teaching late afternoon.
Here is my own adapted current version of the Honey and Co recipe.
Ingredients
80g golden caster sugar
60ml olive oil
1 egg
1 pear, skin peeled and diced small
80g plain flour
a small handful of cardamom pods, ground into powder
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground ginger
Butter, for greasing
For the cake filling
½ cup Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp chia seeds
½ tsp maple syrup
pinch ground cardamon powder
Instructions
1.Put the sugar and oil in a bowl and, with an electric hand mixer, mix to combine. Add the egg, whisk to a smooth paste, then add all the rest of the ingredients except the butter and mix well to combine.
2.Lightly grease a small round cake tin that fits in the chamber of your air fryer – I used a 15 cm round one. Transfer the mix to the buttered tin, and use a spatula to smooth out the top evenly.
3.Set the air fryer to cake function at 150C and cook for 30 minutes. Open the chamber to check it isn’t colouring too much.
4.When the cake comes out, set it to cool on a wire tray.
5.To make the cake filling, mix the yoghurt, chia seeds, ground cardamom powder and maple syrup in a small bowl. Cover and put in the fridge for one hour to set.
6.Once set, put the yoghurt cake mixture between the two cakes.
7.Serve with a cup of hot tea /freshly brewed coffee of your choice!
Reference: Apple and cinnamon ‘pan’ cake
