avocado chocolate cake (GF) with avocado creme anglais

Avocado in a cake? Surely not!  I was inspired to make this cake as my father-in-law, who is an avocado farmer was telling me of a customer who boughts 6 bags of avos for his wife to make cakes!  Intrigued, I went where we all go now to see if it is true, and Google did not let me down.  Who was to know that there were so many avocado cake recipes?

Given Father’s Day was yesterday, I thought it an opportune time to test it out, with avocado’s from the in-laws farm of course.  So, here is my Chocolate Avocado cake, based mostly on a recipe found here.    I also decided to give the avocado creme anglais found here a go too.

The cake was so moist (you couldn’t even taste the avo) and the creme anglais, sweet but had a subtle avocado flavour.

I discovered today talking to my Philippino cleaner that they eat avocado with milk and sugar and other avocado milkshake/icecream concoctions.  The world of avocados has opened much wider!

Here are the recipes:

Chocolate Avocado Cake (Gluten Free)

• 2 cups plain gluten free flour
• 6 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 Tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1/4 cup macadamia oil
• 1 1/2 cups strong coffee (I used decaf)
• 1 avocado well mashed (pureed in a blender with about 1/2 cup of the coffee works well)
• 1 egg
•  2 Tbsp. white vinegar
• 1 tsp. vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Spray a budnt tin with non-stick cooking spray & dust with flour.
3. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In another bowl, beat sugar with the remaining wet ingredients.
5. Using a hand whisk, combine wet and dry ingredients. Pour batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before inverting onto a plate.

I iced my cake with a chocolate ganache and served it with strawberries, cream and ice-cream.

Avocado Creme Anglais (recipe taken from here)

• 1 ripe, fresh avocado, seeded, peeled, and scooped out
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup caster sugar
• 3 egg yolks, room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Place the avocado in a food processor,   pulsing on/off, until coarsely chopped.
2. Mix milk and sugar together in a small heavy saucepan and bring just to a boil over medium heat.
3. Whisk egg yolks together just to blend in a medium bowl.
4. Whisk scalded milk into the yolks, a drop at a time, and return the mixture to the saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat with a spatula until the sauce thickens. Do not allow the mixture to simmer or boil at anytime or it will curdle. Add the mixtureto the avocado in the food processor and process, stopping to scrape down the sides of the container, until completely puréed. Cover and refrigerate until 30 minutes before serving.