This recipe has been in storage for a while, mostly because it’s the first video I have made for this blog and it took me a while to put it all together. Luckily, I had good footage and an amazing baking assistant (thanks Morgan!!), so hopefully you will enjoy this video!
This gluten-free cinnamon cake is loosely based off a recipe from Anna Jones’ cookbook A Modern Way to Cook. I improvised a bit, using garbanzo beans instead of cannellini and all-purpose gluten free flour instead of almond flour. The result was great: a hearty, yet tasty and sweet cinnamon cake.
A Modern Way to Cook is a thick, 300+ page cookbook filled with tons of inventive recipes and vibrant pictures. The book is mostly not desserts, but is filled with vegetarian recipes with a focus on wholesome eating.
When I received the book, I immediately bookmarked a couple dozen recipes — so many of them sounded new to me and I was excited to experiment. Because these recipes are so different, there are a lot of hits and misses, mostly just depending on your own personal taste.
The recipe I’m sharing with you today was a definite hit: it’s a simple and versatile gluten free cake that can be easily adapted to use different types of beans or flour. Another recipe I tried was the Parsnip and Potato Rösti. If you’ve never had a rösti before, it’s kind of like a giant, baked hash brown served with leeks and ricotta. But, as the title suggests, the recipe in the book had the addition of parsnips. Like the potatoes of a hash brown, the parsnips had to be shredded, which took way longer than I would have imagined due to their thickness. The result was a rösti that was very dense and a little too heavy for my liking.
Nonetheless, there are still many amazing recipes in this book that I would love to try, like the Butternut and Sweet Leek Hash, the Sweet Potato and Malted Chocolate Cake (another gluten free one), or the Almond Butter Chocolate Bars.
I would recommend this book to someone willing to experiment with different types of ingredients to make healthier versions of traditional foods — or to make something new altogether. Maybe start off with this gluten free cake and if you like it, check out Anna Jones’ book and stay tuned to this blog!
- 14 ounces canned garbanzo beans
- 2/3 cups honey
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 eggs
- 7 tablespoons melted butter
- ¾ cups gluten-free flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
- 4 ounces (1/2 package) cream cheese
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- cinnamon, to top
- 1. Make the Cake: Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9- or 10-inch springform pan.
- 2. Using a hand blender or, preferably, a food processor, puree the garbanzo beans. With a mixer, add the honey, then the vanilla, then the eggs one at a time. Fold in the melted butter. Next, add the flour, baking powder, and salt and fold that in as well.
- 3. Pour batter into the cake pan. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
- 4. Make the Frosting: Whip together the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar and whip again.
- 5. Cover the top of the cake with a layer of frosting. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top. Enjoy!
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