Recipe: sport cakes

Many times I have been worried about getting a nutritious and balanced meal when I could not cook. Whether you are in a small hotel, on a day-long ride, in a remote area, worried about the quality or the hygiene of food or simply too busy, it can be hard to feed your body and mind.

This is why I developed this cake recipe. I call these muffin-shaped cakes “sport cakes” because they taste great, are easy to digest, and are well balanced from a nutritional point of view (half of calories from carbohydrates, one third from lipids and the rest from proteins). For a complete meal you can have them with fruits (like apples which are easy to carry around). The following recipe makes lemon and poppy seeds cakes. You can vary the sugar (light brown, muscovado, honey, etc.), the flour (rye, oat, but I did not try rice or maize starch so the result is not guaranteed, drop me an email if you want me to design such a recipe) and flavours (orange, cinnamon, nutmeg, nigella seeds etc.) for original cakes. This recipe provides roughly 1000 kilocalories (kcal).

Another advantage of this recipe is that it takes 10 minutes to make and 5 minutes too cook in the microwave! So it's a good time and energy saver (it would take 3 times as much energy to cook these cakes in the standard oven because of preheat time and longer cooking time, because microwaves directly heat the water in the ingredients).

Ingredients:

130 g plain flour

2.5 g baking powder (one level teaspoon)

50 g almond powder

20 g caster sugar (two level tablespoons)

2 medium eggs

20 g skimmed milk powder dissolved in 110 g water

2 tablespoons poppy seeds

zest of two lemons (or two teaspoons of natural lemon flavour)

I use milk powder because providing the same amount of nutrients with milk would add too much water and slightly deplete the cake with proteins (skimmed milk powder is approximately proteins, carbohydrates and minerals) but you can definitely use the milk of your taste. The amount of sugar is voluntarily low to keep the glycemic index of the recipe low but you could use up to 40 g of sugar with roughly the same nutritional balance, if it suits your taste better.

Step 1: Mix the milk powder with the water and stir well to dissolve.

Step 2: Separate the egg whites from the yolks: put the whites in a large bowl and the yolks in the milk (stir well to incorporate the yolks into the milk).

Step 2: Sift the flour and baking powder together (they may contain lumps), put the almond powder and poppy seeds in, mix.

Step 3: Whisk the egg whites with the sugar until very stiff, to make a kind of meringue. Spread the zest or aroma over the meringue, then slowly add the milk and homogenize by whisking more slowly. Do not whisk too much at this time to retain the air you put in the whites.

Step 4: Spread the flour over the meringue and gently homogenize with a large tablespoon (as if you were making chocolate mousse). A large tablespoon will work quicker and retain a light texture.

Step 5: Poor the mix in small ramekins (this recipe fills four 8 cm wide and 4 cm deep ramekins) and cook 5 minutes at 800 watts, opening the door a few seconds after 3 minutes to let the steam escape. If cooking two cakes at a time, cook for 3 minutes only. Small ramekins work best, a larger dish will not preserve the fluffiness of the cakes. I my experience there is no need to grease the ramekins but a fine layer of oil would not do harm. Remove the cakes from the ramekins immediately after cooking by gently detaching the edges and flipping the ramekin upside down (use oven gloves to hold the ramekin). Let the cakes cool for 5 minutes and wrap them in cling film or aluminium foil to retain the moisture.

Due to the low amount of fat (compared to a more traditional recipe), these cakes can become quite firm. This is because the molecular structure of starch changes during cooling, a processus called retrogradation and inhibited by fat. The effect is easily reversed by warming the cakes a bit, for example 10 seconds in a microwave oven (just like bread becomes very soft in a microwave).

Enjoy your sport cakes!