Mini Mocha Bundt Cakes

After making these delicious oat flour muffins I could not stop thinking about other uses for oat flour (and you will see one of my next posts will be about oat flour as well …). Over the past few weeks I have discovered what a great baking ingredient oat flour is. First of all, it is gluten-free (although, and as I have said before, if you are gluten-sensitive, make sure to check the packaging carefully!), it actively lowers cholesterol and has great staying power, making it the perfect ingredient for baking breakfast goodies.

I make my own oat flour at home by simply throwing the quantity I need into my food processor and grinding the oats as fine or coarse as I need them. This also allows me to use coarsely ground oats instead of almonds for a very frugal way of achieving the same texture in cakes and cookies (these anise seed cookies I made for Christmas were light and crumbly, just like the traditional almond version). And, this also means that oats can be used to replace polenta or almonds in a whole plethora of recipes.

This time round, I made Mini Mocha Bundt Cakes as I finally wanted to use these cute tins I bought in Tokyo a few years ago on Kappabashi Dori – a long street in Tokyo lined with myriad of different kitchen stores. I was in heaven and, together with Alessandro, we bought some scarily sharp knives, a ginkgo leaf cutter (it was cute and my mum loves ginkgo – maybe I should put this to good use and decorate her next birthday cake with some ginkgo leaves?), beautiful ceramic bowls in various shapes and sizes, a set of hammered teaspoons and a set of mini bundt cake tins.

For these cakes I played around with a few different flavour combinations before settling on mocha cakes – little cakes flavoured with a mix of dark cocoa powder and a shot of espresso (similar to these cookies) and drizzled with dark chocolate olive oil ganache topped with some cacao nib, chopped walnuts and sea salt flakes. Yes, they felt a little decadent for breakfast but then, what is wrong with that?

Mini Mocha Bundt Cakes

Ingredients for 4 mini bundt cakes

For the cakes

110g oat flour
20g spelt flour
40g cocoa powder
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1 egg
65g brown sugar
50ml olive oil
70ml milk
1 shot espresso (30ml)

For the topping
50g dark chocolate, chopped
15g olive oil
1/4 tsp sea salt flakes
2 tsp walnuts, chopped
2 tsp cacao nibs

Directions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease four mini bundt cake tins or medium-sized muffin tins.

2. Start by mixing the coarse oat flour with the spelt flour, the cocoa powder, baking powder and pinch of salt in a bowl.

3. Separate the egg and set aside the white.

4. Beat the egg yolk and the sugar with an electric mixer while slowly drizzling in the olive oil. Once the yolks and the olive oil are thoroughly combined (i.e. there is no more oil swimming on top of the mix), stir in the milk and the espresso.

5. Pour the egg yolk mix over the dry ingredients and stir together with a whisk.

6. Beat the egg white until it forms stiff peaks.

7. Mix a third of the egg white into the batter to loosen it. Add the remaining egg white and carefully fold this into the batter, being careful not to deflate the mix.

8. Distribute the batter evenly between the four tins.

9. Bake the cakes for ca. 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Once cool enough to handle, invert the cakes onto a drying rack and leave to cool completely.

10. For the ganache, melt the chopped chocolate in the microwave in intervals of 30 seconds. When about 2/3 of the chocolate is melted, take the chocolate out of the microwave, pour in the olive oil and stir everything together.

11. Drizzle the ganache over the four cakes and scatter the cacao nib, chopped walnuts and sea salt over the cakes. Wait for the ganache to set before serving.