Strawberry Crumble Cake

I bought a punnet of strawberries yesterday, as usual, they were too sour to eat on it's own. I looked through some recipes and decided to use them to make a crumble cake. I have been wanting to try this blueberry crumble cake recipe which I came across from a book, Cooking Desserts. I was really captivated by the beautiful photo of the cake and I've meant to try it once I get hold of some blueberries. Since I have yet to get any blueberries, I thought I should experiment it with strawberries instead. Hence, I got myself busy this afternoon and baked this Strawberry Crumble Cake.


Although I have whole-wheat (or wholemeal) flour on hand, I replaced it with almond meal as I am starting to like the taste of ground almonds in cakes. The original recipe uses chopped pecans for the toppings, but I used some left over walnuts instead. I also cut down the sugar a little, as I thought a full cup of sugar would be too sweet. This cake requires some extra effort as you will need to spend some time to dice the strawberries, chop-up the walnuts (I break them into pieces), and zest the lemon. Once the initial preparations were done, the mixing of the batter was rather straight forward. All that was required was mixing the dry ingredients together, whisk the wet ingredients separately, then pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and gave a few stir to combine. The toppings was also very easy, just combine everything together, sprinkle over the batter and finally drizzle some oil over and very soon it was ready for baking.



Since I wasn't sure whether the cake was thoroughly cooked through, I gave it another extra 5 to 10 mins in the oven. As a result, some of the walnuts were a little burnt although it didn't really affect the taste too much. The cake itself has got the texture which is almost similar to the strawberry yoghurt cake I did earlier. The difference lies on the toppings. It really gave the cake a very nice, sweet and nutty touch to it. The cake tasted delicious despite the tangy strawberries :)



Ingredients:

140g plain flour
70g almond meal
150g caster sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup strawberries, diced
1 egg at room temperature
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
grated zest of 1 lemon

Topping:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
60g light brown sugar
35g plain flour
1 cup strawberries, diced
2 tablespoons oil

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 190 degC. Grease the sides and line bottom of a 20cm round pan with parchment paper.
2. Sift flour, almond meal, sugar, baking powder into a large bowl. Toss the diced strawberries through the flour mixture.
3. In a separate bowl, with a manual whisk, whisk together the egg, milk, oil, vanilla and lemon zest. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir with a spatula to combine.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
5. To make the topping, combine the walnuts, brown sugar, flour and strawberries in a bowl, and sprinkle evenly over the cake. Drizzle the oil over the topping.
6. Bake for 50~55 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.
7. Let the cake cool in the pan for 20mins before unmolding. Serve the cake warm.

Recipe source: adapted from Cooking Desserts, Katy Holder