Lemon Chia Seed Cake

Recently, I picked a copy of a Delicious magazine cookbook.  I was attracted by the lovely looking dishes with a slightly healthier twist.

The first recipe that caught my eye was a Lemon Chia Seed Cake, which a Web search indicated is by Sydney chef, Matt Moran. This cake is made entirely on wholemeal flour, which intrigued me, because I would have thought it would make the resulting cake quite dense.

Wrong!  The cake was as light as a feather, and absolutely delicious.  It went like hotcakes at work, and I admit to taking an extra slice because I liked to so much.  

The cake contains black chia seeds, which pleased me because I could use up some of the chia seeds I already had (and now don't know what to do with).  It  is lightly flavoured with lemon, and lemon zest decorates the cake, which adds to the light lemon flavour.

Instead of the yoghurt icing, I made a lemon glaze, for the sole reason that the glaze is more transportable.  However, if you were making this at home, yoghurt icing would be perfect.

To make this cake, you will need:

2 tablespoons black chia seeds
80ml milk
400g wholemeal plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g butter
200g light muscovado sugar (I just used brown sugar)
2 eggs
juice and finely grated zest of 1 lemon
250g Greek yoghurt

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and lightly grease or oil a 22cm ring tin or bundt pan.

Combine the chia seeds and milk in a small bowl and allow to stand for 5 minutes.

Whisk together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer until pale and fluffy ("creamed", in the old parlance).  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add the chia seed mixture and the lemon juice and zest and beat on low until just  combined.

Alternately add the flour and yoghurt to the cake batter in two batches, beating on low until just combined.

Scrape the cake batter into the prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until cooked through.  Allow the cake to cool in the tin on a wire rack.

Once the cake has cooled, unmould it and ice with yoghurt icing or a simple lemon glaze (made with a mixture of icing sugar and lemon juice).  Decorate with more lemon zest, if desired.

Serve and enjoy!!!