‘Healthy’ Matcha, Raspberry and Honey Cake

After about a year of consistent blogging you have probably noticed most of my recipes are not largely aimed at healthy eating and lean to the more indulgent end of afternoon snacking. Apart from a few posts, including my healthier honey gingerbread and my beetroot brownies, a lot of my posts definitely warrant the #howtogetfat on my instagram. However, since I am running a tough mudder in about a month’s time (which I promise not to bore you with/ bring up too much), I thought a few slightly more nutritious offerings, if you will, wouldn’t go amiss.

When I say nutritious offerings, I am by no means suggesting that this particular instance will be the most helpful. Yes, it’s probably more nutritious than a standard cake, but cake, unfortunately, is still cake. While I did adapt the recipe from the ‘Flat Belly Meals’ book/ magazine from Women’s Health, I doubt it will help eliminate the pouch I have been battling with for as long as I can remember! But why not give it a try?

The recipe uses rye flour,which is lower in calories and higher in protein than your regular self-raising, and it does not include any refined sugar. I, of course, ruined this slightly by using normal jam in the icing, but aside from that it sticks to more natural ingredients. Since I haven’t used it in any posts since my white chocolate and matcha macarons, I made the decision to use the green tea powder again in this instance. As it is basically a concentrated version, providing the equivalent of 10 cups using leaves, it supposedly helps boost metabolism amongst having other health benefits.

But the main question is does it taste any good? Surprisingly the answer is it actually does! Although I took a little longer to ice the cake than I intended, meaning it was a little dry and more crumbly than I expected, the flavours worked really well. It may not be the sweetest cake in the world, but I think this is definitely a good thing. The matcha gives it a lighter flavour and the fresh raspberries make it a great springtime treat. The only note I will add is that you should make sure you use fromage frais for the icing. I naively assumed that flavoured yoghurt would be a suitable substitute and, let’s just put it this way, it isn’t. However, the recipe is really easy to play around with as a whole so feel free to use your own ideas in terms of flavours. Either way I hope you enjoy!

‘Healthy’ Matcha, Honey and Raspberry Cake (serves approx. 6)

• 60g hazelnuts
• 130g unsalted butter
• 110g spelt flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 130g honey
• 1 rounded tsp matcha powder
• 175g fat free fromage frais
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1tsp raspberry jam
• 1 small punnet of raspberries

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C Fan.
2. Roast the hazelnuts for about 7 minutes and, after leaving them to cool for a couple of minutes, rub off the skins and blitz them in a food processor.
3. Sift the flour and the baking powder into a separate bowl and add the hazelnuts, eggs, 130g honey and matcha powder. Once incorporated, pour into lined cake tins and bake for about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
4. Whip the fromage frais with an electric hand mixer and add the honey. Stir the jam in a small bowl until smooth and marble it through the icing mix. Ice the bottom layer of the cake and then sandwich it with the top, then use the rest of the icing and the raspberries to decorate.