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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Avocado cake

I had this avocado cake on my mind for a while, after seeing it here (originated here), but never had the reason and the quantity of ripe avocados to make it. My labmate P is taking a leave of absence to start a business, his favourite food is avocado, so we decided to have an avocado-themed get-together before he leaves.

Reason had arrived! All I needed then was lots of ripe avocados: I put six avocados into intensive ripening school (in a bag with a plantain and a banana, in the warmest place in our apartment) and they qualified, just about, just in time...

(ended up needing 4 small-medium avocados in total, although didn't use all of the fourth)

For the cake:
3 cups plain flour
6 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (avocado oil or light olive oil perhaps better)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado
2 cups water
2 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tsp vanilla essence

For the icing:
8 oz avocado meat, about 2 small to medium, very ripe avocados
2 tsp lemon juice (used lime)
1 lb icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence (used more lime juice instead)

For decoration:
(a tiny model avocado, made of pseudo marzipan)
approx 4 tbsp ground almonds
approx 4 tbsp icing sugar
1/2 tsp ground linseed mixed with 1/3 tbsp boiling water
few drops rum
few drops green food colouring (or green+yellow mixture)
2-3 tbsp cocoa for rolling

(a little bit of orange-tinged icing):
1 avocado stone, finely chopped and soaked overnight in 2 tbsp water
3 tbsp icing sugar

Heat oven to 350F. Grease and line the bases of two 8 or 9-inch cake tins.

In a large bowl, mix with a fork all of the dry ingredients except the sugar. Mix all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, including the mashed avocado. Add sugar into the wet mix and stir.

Add the dry to the wet, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth. Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30-40 min, until a skewer comes out clean.

Let cakes cool in the tins for 15 min, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before icing.

While the cakes are baking and / or cooling, make the icing. Peel and pit the soft avocados. It’s important to use the ripest avocados you can get your hands on. If the avocados have brown spots in the meat, avoid those spots when you scoop the meat into the bowl.

Put the avocado in a blender with the lime juice and pulse til completely smooth and lightened in colour (nb a different machine eg food processor with whisk attachment would have been better - it took a long time to get it smooth as it wasn't catching in the blades properly).

Decant the smooth avocado into a bowl and beat in the icing sugar a little at a time with a whisk. Add vanilla essence (if using) and whisk until combined. If not using right away, store in the refrigerator*'.

To make the tiny avocado out of marzipan, mix the sugar and ground almonds, mix the wet ingredients separately, then rub the wet through with your fingers to evenly distribute the colour before bring it all together into a ball. Shape it into an avocado shape and then roll it in cocoa powder. Poke all over the surface with a toothpick or knitting needle or similar point to make it look more like avocado skin. Cut in half lengthwise with a sharp knife. Hollow out the middle of each half to make the space for the stone. Shape the stuff you hollowed out into a stone shape and roll in cocoa before replacing in one side. This is your tiny avocado.

To make avocado stone icing, chop an avocado stone finely and soak overnight in just enough water to cover it. Mix a few drops with icing sugar until a good spreading consistency is achieved.

To assemble, layer the cake with half the avocado icing in the middle and half on top. Arrange the orange icing and the tiny avocado halves on top.


It's weird, but good. The icing is interesting: definitely tastes like avocado, also like lime, also really sweet - kind of a sensory double-take, then it's like, OK, this is good. It has a strange, almost slippery texture - some modification (adding firm silken tofu?) might be good. The cake is fine but a little bland - could do with some more intense flavour going on - the chocolate taste is kind of half hearted. It looked great though - the visual impact was wicked.

There are various modifications I might have made if I hadn't been tired / on autopilot / so grateful for having a recipe where everything was spelled out and I didn't have to think about it:

*'the icing did not go brown on storage, but it did turn kind of off-green - ideally it would be made as close to the time of eating as poss
* cake was massive - 2/3 recipe quantity or even half would have been sufficient
* avocado oil or a light olive oil would have been better than the veg oil I used
* like the idea of making it a lime and rum cake as well as / instead of the chocolate
* if sticking with the chocolate, think more would have been better
* if ever making an avocado cake again, I might try this one instead
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