This Salted Caramel Butter Cake is dedicated to a wonderful group of Senior students from Gunbalanya Community School.
Gunbalanya is a remote indigenous town in West Arnhem Land. We were honoured to be invited out to the community and to share our passion for empowering kids to make better food choices. As part of our work there, I was asked to run some cooking classes with the Seniors. I wanted to introduce them to healthier alternatives to ingredients they already cook with at school. As such, this is not my typical gluten and refined sugar free cake because I believe you have to meet people where they are at in their health journey. These seniors are starting out, so this cake uses good old fashioned pantry staples – gluten flour and sugar, but of the less processed variety.
Ingredients
Salted Caramel Topping
- 6 Medjool dates
- Warm water to cover dates
- ¼ teaspoon Celtic Sea Salt*
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1-2 tablespoons water or coconut milk/cream
* Test the saltiness of the topping. If you like a strong salt flavour, you may wish to increase the salt to 1/2 teaspoon.
The cake batter
- 125g room temperature butter. Chop into cubes
- 3/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour*, sifted
- 1/2 cup milk
- Small amount of shredded coconut to sprinkle on top of cake before baking
* If you don’t have self raising flour, use plain flour and add in 2 teaspoons of baking powder
Method
To make the topping
- Remove seeds from dates
- Cover dates with enough water and soak them for 5-10 minutes
- Drain dates
- Place dates, salt, vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon of water or coconut milk into a blender
- Blitz on high speed until the mixture is creamy
- Store in the fridge
To make the cake batter
- Preheat oven 180°C. Line a deep 20cm round cake tin, a lamington or muffin tin (I used a lamington tin)
- Beat butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer
- Beat until the mixture is pale in colour – this will make the cake fluffier to eat
- Add one egg, beat until well combined. Scrape down sides
- Add the next egg. Beat until well combined. Scrape down sides again
- Fold in half of the flour with a wooden spoon
- Now add in the milk, fold in with wooden spoon
- Fold in the rest of the flour
- Scoop your batter into the pan
- Spread your salted caramel topping on top of the batter
- Use a butter knife to swirl the salted caramel topping through the batter so the topping is not visible
- Sprinkle shredded coconut over the top of the batter
- Bake in preheated oven for 40-45 minutes. Test with a skewer – if it pulls out clear, then it’s ready
- Cool in pan about 10 minutes. Turn out onto wire rack
Storing / Freezing
This cake freezes well. Cut up into lunchbox sized pieces and freeze in an airtight container. Simply pop a piece into the lunchbox and it will be defrosted and ready to eat at recess.
Just a reminder, you don’t need to be a master chef, or have a big spotless kitchen to make awesome nutritious meals or snacks for your family.