A glutenfree Walnut Cake with Marzipan Maple Leaves

by Johanna

Autumn is slowly turning into winter. Most trees have lost their leaves which are now covering the street. It's as if yellow and red and brown snow was covering it. The days are getting shorter and shorter, especially if you live in Britain and night falls at five in the afternoon. With fog covering the fields in the morning and evenings and white frost announcing the arrival of winter, it's time for one last autumn cake before the Christmas baking kicks off... don't you think? 

This cake pretty much combines the tastes and impressions I associate with the third season: the colors of leaves, the astringent taste of walnuts, the sweetness of oranges and the luxurious comfort of home. 

For your marzipan maple leaves take one block of marzipan and divided into three. Use red and green food colouring.

The cake didn't come out perfect. I decided to show you this because all too often food blogs (or for that matter food bloggers) appear to be impeccable. I wanted to show you that sometimes the things we cook or bake have flaws, and there is no point hiding it. Flaws do not necessarily ruin the taste and they don't have to ruin looks either. After all, it's what you make out of it that makes the difference. In this case I decided to hide the flaw with a lot of chocolate cream and marzipan maple leaves and everyone loved the cake, no matter what! Now that you know we have to master kitchen crises just like everyone else, let's do some baking! 

Ingredients.

use 22cm round baking tin - takes about 5 hours

3 Tablespoons soy flour + 6 Tablespoons water
skin + juice of 2 organic oranges
200g organic cane sugar
pinch of vanilla
300g glutenfree flour
100g almond flour
75g walnuts
75g dark chocolate
1 pack of baking powder
100ml organic sunflower oil
300ml organic almond milk

for the decoration:
250g dark chocolate
200g raw marzipan
​red and green food colouring
maple leaf cutter
3 ​walnuts  

Prep.

Preheat oven at 180°C. 

On a wooden board, grate walnuts and dark chocolate into small chunks before putting them aside for now. In a mixing bowl, mix soy flour and water. Add grated skin as well as the juice of two oranges, sugar, oil, almond milk, vanilla, glutenfree flour,  almond flour as well as baking powder and mix well. Now add the walnuts and dark chocolate pieces to the dough and mix everything well. Give dough into an oiled baking tin and keep in the oven for 40-45min. 

Let cake cool down for 2-3 hours. In the meantime, prepare marzipan maple leaves. Divide your marzipan piece into three equal chunks as shown in the pictures above. Using food colouring, dye one piece red and the other green. Make small balls of natural, green and red marzipan and connect them by rolling out the marzipan balls with a rolling pin. Cut out leaves with a maple leaf cutter. 

When your cake has cooled down. Break 250g of dark chocolate into small pieces and melt them in a double boiler. Distribute the melted chocolate evenly on your cake. Decorate cake with marzipan maple leaves and walnuts - et voilá :)