Blue Monday

 

from http://iharthdarth.livejournal.com/

Last week my daughter was having a particularly bad day and I wanted to cheer her up with something warm, hearty and homey.  I scanned the shelves and bins in my kitchen for a while, finally settling on a favourite of both hers and mine; pinhead oatmeal.  As I moved the bag of oatmeal out I saw behind it a bag of spelt flour we had bought some time ago, intending to find wonderful things to do with this ancient species of wheat.  Seeing it again made me think about that and I had an overwhelming urge to use it.  I ended up searching the internet for recipes containing spelt and was happy as a clam when I saw that one of the links was to a category for spelt over at 101 Cookbooks, a blog I use to read quite often when I had my previous cooking site.

After a quick glance at the list, I hit upon her Rosemary Olive Oil Cake.  It sounded delicious as written, but I knew I wanted to modify it to suit our tastes more.  Despite the driving force to make this being my daughter's bad day, I have yet to see my youngest son refuse cake of any kind and wanted to include him as a recipient as well.

What I came up with for us didn't include rosemary, but did include homemade granola.  And oh wow, was this cake fantastic.

   

Blue Monday Cake

Dry Ingredients

1 cup spelt flour

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups toasted granola

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients

3 eggs

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup whole milk

7 ounces dark chocolate with hazelnuts, chopped

2 tbs demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 3 inch deep 9 x 5 loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.  Mix dry ingredients together with a whisk in a medium bowl and set aside.  Whisk eggs in a large bowl until homogeneous, then whisk in oil and milk.  Fold the dry ingredients into the wet until just combined.  Fold in 2/3s of the chopped chocolate.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  Sprinkle the top with remaining chopped chocolate and press into dough very lightly with the back of a spoon.  You want the pieces to be on top, but not to fall off when the cake comes out of the oven.  Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top of the batter.  Bake for approximately 1 hour, or until golden and a metal skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cool briefly in the pan, then remove to cool on a rack.  Serve while warm, if possible, or at room temperature.