Chocolate Quinoa Cake with Chocolate Avocado Icing

So guess what! My blog turned eleven years old this week! Whuuuut! I keep forgetting to do blog birthday posts - I've only done them for my fifth and sixth blog birthdays respectively - and I totally missed the big tenth birthday last year because we were travelling through Cambodia. Whoops. But better infrequent than never, so happy eleventh birthday to Sarah Cooks!

That's eleven years, 1177 posts, and more chocolate than I care to admit! Thanks everyone for joining me on my food journey! The blogging world has changed a lot since I started, but my passion for food and my incessant need to record everything I do is still going strong. I update my blog quite regularly, about five to nine times a month, but don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for even more food-related goodness! (I recently signed up for Snapchat and Periscope, but literally have no idea how to use those - it just seemed that's what all the kids are doing these days, and I didn't want to miss out, heh).

Today's post, of course, had to be a chocolate cake. I don't bake chocolate cakes that often any more, but I saw this chocolate quinoa cake on Lorraine's blog a short while back, and was immediately intrigued. She first tried it while on a yoga retreat, and was given the recipe by the chef there. When she made it herself and posted up the recipe on her blog, it just looked so rich and chocolatey and fudgy and I just Had To Have It!

It's gluten free and flourless, with the heft in the cake coming from cooked and cooled quinoa. (Just quietly, I am totally over quinoa in savoury dishes, and was glad to find a delicious use for the sad jar of quinoa I had left in my pantry!) The other ingredients are eggs, milk, lots of cocoa, coconut sugar, leavenings, vanilla extract, butter and coconut oil. This would easily be made dairy-free by subbing in almond or soy milk and using all coconut oil. It's quite easy to make - basically you just chuck everything in the processor and whizz!

Chocolate Quinoa Cake

Despite my fascination with healthy cooking and baking, I've never gotten into coconut oil in a big way. I keep reading that it has lots of health benefits, but I can't get over my fear of saturated fat. And more importantly, I often find the strong taste of coconut oil overpowers other flavours. However, when this cake was baking, it smelled absolutely gorgeous! The chocolate-coconut combination was extremely inviting. I actually used a higher ratio of coconut oil-to-butter than Lorraine did; next time I'd go all coconut oil.

I also eschewed the coconut-cream based icing in the original recipe, and (of course), went for the avocado-based chocolate icing that I've previously made to top a vegan avocado chocolate cake. Well, I had a lot of avocados to use up! And I love how glossy and luscious it is - I knew it would compliment the rich fudgy chocolate cake perfectly.

Luscious chocolate cake

With tea!

So - the taste! The cake is deeply chocolatey (all that dark dark cocoa!), and incredibly moist, almost like a pudding. Interestingly, the quinoa didn't get completely ground up in the processor, so there were lots of little quinoa flecks throughout the cake, which gave an unusual, but not unwelcome, slightly crunchy texture.

Chocolate Quinoa Cake

Chocolate Quinoa Cake

Chocolate Quinoa Cake with Chocolate Avocado Icing

In addition to being delicious, this cake keeps well - leftover pieces lasted for a week and still tasted good. So moist and luscious. Enjoy! Thanks to Lorraine for sharing this recipe, and thank you all for following my blog! Here's to the next eleven years!

Chocolate Quinoa Cake with Chocolate Avocado Icing
Cake recipe adapted from Not Quite Nigella, Icing recipe adapted from Paleo Spirit

Ingredients
For the Cake
2 cups cooked and cooled quinoa
1/3 cup milk of your choice
4 eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup melted butter (or an extra 1/4 cup melted coconut oil)
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup raw cocoa powder
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
For the Icing
1 very ripe avocado
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cups icing sugar

Method
For the Cake
Preheat the oven to 175C. Line a 20cm springform tin with baking paper.
Place the eggs, milk and vanilla in the bowl of a food processor, and whizz to combine.
Add the melted butter, coconut oil and quinoa, and whizz again.
Add the coconut sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb and salt, and whizz again until combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. (N.B. it is a very liquid mixture). Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Allow to cool completely in the tin before turning out onto a serving plate.
For the Icing
Place the avocado flesh, cocoa powder and icing sugar in a food processor and whizz to combine. Add a tablespoon of water if necessary to achieve a spreadable consistency. Spread the icing over the top of the cold cake in a swirly fashion.

So, my last post on our Germany trip was a bit of a Rudolf-love-fest (Hallo Rudolf!), but let me tell you, Sandra's mum, Margit, is pretty damn awesome too! In the weeks leading up to our trip, Sandra was excitedly thinking of her childhood favourites and sending her mum requests for home-cooked lunches. (Typically the biggest meal of the day is at lunch, and you'd eat something smaller at dinner).

I think a lot of these dishes are very different from what we Australians tend to think of as German food. Here we typically think of Bavarian food (sauerkraut, pork knuckles, sausages) as being representative of German food as a whole, so I thought y'all might be interested to see some old fashioned German home cooking! I also figure this post will be useful for us on our next trip to Germany and we want to decide what to eat! I caught Sandra searching through my old Germany blog posts when her mum asked: "Was wollt ihr essen?" (What do you want to eat?)

It's also interesting to note that German food (and language) is extremely regional, so while these dishes are typical of Lampertheim (and southern Germany generally), you'd see very different dishes in, say, Bavaria or the north of Germany, and there'd certainly be different names for the same thing.

Let's have a look!

Brockelbohnen

Brokelbohnen mit Bauch und Dörrfleisch

Schupfnudeln mit Dörrfleisch

Kartoffelpfannkuchen mit Apfelmus und Hühnersuppe

That's potato pancakes with apple sauce and chicken soup. Kartoffelpfannkuchen also go by the name of Reibekuchen, Kartoffelpuffer and are just grated up fried potatoes. (Similar to the Schupfnudeln, these are something I've made from scratch at home, which takes quite a bit of time, but in Germany they sell good quality packet versions).

Kartoffelpfannkuchen mit Apfelmus

They are crunchy and potatoey and delicious! These are typically served as a side dish to soup - in this case, a clear chicken broth.

Hühnersuppe

Speaking of tasty soups and accompaniments...

Rindfleischsuppe mit Markklößchen

One of my favourite Suppeneinlagen (soup accompaniments) is Markklößchen! That's bone marrow dumplings (and see my Markklößchen recipe here). This time they were served in a beef soup, with that other bastion of deliciousness - Dampfnudeln!

Dampfnudel

Literally: "steamed noodle", Dampfnudeln are made from a dough similar to Chinese bao dough (flour, yeast, water, salt) and are cooked potsticker style, so half steamed half fried. They're soft and fluffy inside and crunchy on the bottom. So good! You can also see some in the background have been made with the crunchy salt crust on both sides, made by special request. I've made these once since we got home - can't wait to share the recipe with you!

Rinderrouladen mit Spätzle

Rinderrouladen ("beef roulade") are thin slices of beef, layered with gherkins and speck, then rolled up, tied with string and cooked in a pressure cooker. They kinda taste like a cheeseburger! These were served with gravy and Spätzle - little short pasta. We've gotten into making Spätzle in a big way now that we're home (we have a Spätzle press and everything!) - recipe to come!

Lee Ho Fook

Lee Ho Fook

I really liked the atmosphere of the new Lee Ho Fook, with its high ceilings and warehouse vibe. There aren't any cocktails (it was a Friday night, I asked!), but they do have a very accessible list of wines available by the glass.

Arfion Pinot Rose Yarra Valley - $12 per glass

The menu has a similar feel, with a focus on fun and modern Chinese cuisine. (The crispy eggplant survived the move to the CBD, awww yeah!) Prices seem to have gone up a couple of dollars per dish - it's definitely on the pricey side, with most mains ranging from $32 to $38. There was a very tempting ten-course banquet option for $68 a head, but we had a couple of dietary requirements on the table, so thought it would be easier to order our own dishes. Between one non-seafood eater, one pescetarian, and two greedy people who eat everything, I think we did pretty well! (Can you guess which category I fall into?)

Maple Walnut Overnight Oats

Welcome to my new favourite breakfast! I think my current breakfast game is pretty strong, (and see my September Unblogged Files for more evidence), but it's always good to have a few different options up my sleeve, especially one that's this quick and easy. Since I got back from Germany, it seems that my go-to breakfasts have been açaí bowls, chia puddings or avocado on toast. All are delicious and happiness-inducing, but they all take a little time (the açaí bowls and chia puddings because they need a blender, the avo on toast because it needs precision-slicing).

I saw this recipe for overnight oats in an issue of Clean Eating magazine, and saw that not only was it super quick to make, but it ticked all my breakfast boxes - nutritious, wholesome and most importantly, instagrammable! Heh.

Basically all you do is stir together some rolled oats, chia seeds, milk, cinnamon and vanilla, and let it sit overnight. The next morning you top it with fruit, walnuts, peanut butter and a little maple syrup. Boom! I find this to be a super hearty breakfast, and it really keeps me going until lunchtime - no snacks required! Fibre, protein, omega-3s! Rar!

With raspberries!

Obviously this recipe is ripe for flavour variations - I'm still loving the combo of vanilla, cinnamon, banana, PB and walnuts, but if you've got any other ideas, please leave them in the comments!

Maple Walnut Overnight Oats
Recipe adapted from Clean Eating

Ingredients
3/4 cup milk (almond, dairy, your choice)
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 small banana, sliced
1 teaspoon peanut butter (or nut butter of your choice)
1 tablespoon chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon maple syrup

Method
Stir the milk, rolled oats, chia seeds, cinnamon and vanilla in a bowl. Cover with clingwrap and refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, give the mixture a stir and top with banana, peanut butter, walnuts and maple syrup.
Serves 1

Brezel, Coffee

German bread is The Best. Fact. Therefore, German breakfasts are also The Best! Aah, August 2015 was a glorious carb-filled month. I've told you about my love for German bread previously, and for today's post I want to show you some of the lovely breakfasts we had on our most recent trip! Every night, Sandra's dad, Rudolf, would ask us what we wanted for breakfast, and would get up early to go to the bakery so that a delicious selection of bread would be waiting for us when we got up. Naaaaw!

I usually made a choice reasonably quickly, but sometimes I was overwhelmed at the prospect of so many opportunities for deliciousness and I'd be stuck in indecision.

Rudolf: What do you girls want for breakfast tomorrow?
Sandra: One pretzel please!
Me: Um... a pretzel. Oh wait, a plain bread roll. Or maybe a quark danish? Are they doing Berliners this time of year?                    Umm... this is too stressful, can you come back to me?
Rudolf: Sarah, would you like to come to the bakery with me and choose yourself?
Me: Yes please!

Decisiveness has never been a strength of mine, heh.

Anyhoo, before I get into the bread, let me show you a couple of breakfasts we had out. On our first morning in Germany, we went to the local Backparadies-Hug for brekky. They used to do a buffet breakfast, but they seem to have stopped that now. Either way, my Käse-Frühstück (cheese breakfast) was delicious, and excellent value at €4,95 for two bread rolls with butter, a coffee, 2 slices each of tomato, Camembert and Gouda, and a little pot of Frischkäse (similar to cream cheese).

Käse-Frühstück at Hug - 4.95€ for a small coffee, 2 x Brötchen, 2 x Camembert, 2 x Gouda, 1 portion Frischkäse, 2 x butter

Fleischkäse im Brötchen (pork meatloaf in a bread roll) is also always a good choice.

Fleishkäse im Brötchen

Ikea breakfast

Back onto the breakfasts at home - I got into Rahmjogurt in a big way on this trip. That's yogurt made from cream, not milk - so indulgent! The Weihenstephan brand was my favourite! That Schoko & Keks Muesli was also pretty ridiculous - normal crunchy oaty muesli clusters with little pieces of milk chocolate and tiny squares of butter biscuits! I bought that green smoothie (with matcha, ginger, kale, pears, spinach, bananas and apple) as a novelty, but it was no Green Press.

Raspberries, Choc-chip cream yogurt, Knusper "Schoko & Keks Muesli", Green smoothie

Raspberries, cream yogurt, grainy Brötchen, coffee (mit Kaffeesahne!)

Puddingstreusel

I also really liked the Hefestreusel - a sweetened yeasty dough topped with a generous amount of crunchy streusel crumbs. These are even nicer the day after they're baked, when they dry out a little and you can dip them in coffee.

Raspberries, Cream yogurt, Hefestreusel

Quarkplunder! (Plunder = Danish, by the way). I got two from two different bakeries because I wanted to see the difference and I love quark! (This reminds me, I should bake Danishes at home again soon). Both were pretty similar, and equally delicious. Quarkplunders are my favourite of all the plunders.

Quarkplunder

This is an Apfelstreuselkuchen - yeasted base with sliced apples and lots of crumble. The sides were deliciously crunchy and caramelised - yum!

Apfelstreuselkuchen

This next picture was from a big Sunday breakfast. On the back plate we have a Schoko-croissant, a normal croissant, a cheese roll (I think), a Rosinenbrötchen (raisin bread roll) and a normal white Brötchen. In the centre are a few Zopf (pastry twists), with nuts or pudding. And heaps of berries because I can never resist buying the cheap and plentiful berries when in Europe!

Berries, Nusszopf, Schokocroissant, Croissant, Brötchen

Below we have a classic pretzel, and a Schnecke (literally "snail", a yeasted and laminated dough with raisins).

Brezel, Schnecke

One morning when I was trying to be "healthy", I asked for some grainy rolls. ("Vogelfutter", or "bird food", as Rudolf calls them).

Brötchen

Although I think any health benefits from the grains were easily cancelled when I filled the bread rolls with brie and salami! Whoops.

Brötchen mit Käse und Salami

On the left hand side we have a normal croissant, and a Laugencroissant. (That's a croissant dipped in lye solution before it's baked, so that it has a delightful pretzel-y taste). Also, croissants in Germany are different from French ones - they're a bit breadier and doughier in Germany and less flaky. In the below pic, we also have a Rosinenbrötchen (raisin bread roll), and a Laugenstange. (That's a long bread roll, dipped in lye solution before being baked. Essentially, it's a pretzel but just in a stick shape).

From left to right: Normales Croissant, Laugencroissant, Rosinenbrötchen, Laugenstange

And there we have it! Wow, looking back at all those breakfasts makes me wanna book a trip back to Germany! And soon!

Aunt Billie's

How do you guys normally hear about new cafes? Before I started my blog (almost eleven years ago!) it would be from paper-media guides like Cheap Eats or Epicure. Then when food blogs became popular, I'd always hear about the latest and greatest cafes from blogs! (Especially Where's The Beef - those guys are awesome!) These days, it's definitely Instagram. It usually goes like this - see a delicious looking meal at a cafe on someone's Instagram, check the geotag, see if the other dishes from that cafe look nice, check out the cafe's website, then make a beeline for the cafe! That's how we heard about Aunt Billies Cafe - we saw it on the lovely Daisy's Instagram, and thought it would be a great place to bring my parents.

Aunt Billies Cafe
184 Surrey Road
Blackburn, VIC 3130
Ph: (03) 9894-7774
Website


Aunt Billies is out in Blackburn (Eastern suburbs for lyf!), and is bright, cute and spacious. We also found the service to be really friendly and welcoming - hooray!

Aunt Billie's

Cake display

Coffees were very impressive.

Left: Cappuccino, Right: Magic

2 x lattes

Soft shell crab burger with carrot and coriander salad, chipotle mayo on a brioche bun - $20.50

My dad normally orders beef burgers at cafes, but really wanted to try a soft-shell crab burger as he thought it sounded really unusual. It was a bit tricky to eat, but otherwise he really enjoyed it.

BBQ breakfast roll with crispy bacon, fried eggs, housemade BBQ sauce - $10.50

Sandra's bacon and egg roll was a classic but a goodie - crisp bacon, fried eggs and barbecue sauce in a toasted Turkish roll. Just the kind of thing I'd want to eat when I'm hungover. (Not that I'm ever hungover).

Pumpkin tart

My mum saw the pumpkin tart in the cabinet and had to order it - roast pumpkin, sunflower seeds and feta bound together by an eggy mixture and encased in puff pastry. Delicious!

Billies bowl with cauliflower, freekeh, kale, avocado, seeds, almonds, black pearl barley and currants - $15

I went for the Billies bowl - a healthy mix of grains, vegetables, nuts and currants, with an added poached egg. Overall I enjoyed this (Cauliflower! Avocado! Ding ding ding!), but found my bowl quite heavy on the currants. Even though I love dried fruit in savoury food, the balance was a little off here, and I ended up picking out the currants and leaving about half of them behind.

Aunt Billie's was a great find - my parents loved it and have made a few return visits since! Success. Nice food, good coffee, easy parking and friendly staff. What more could you want?