I once saw a very interesting tweet – “screw quinoa, bring on dalia” (broken wheat). A light went off my head after. Lately, quinoa is the norm, it’s every health nut’s choice of ingredient. It’s tasty, very nutritious, true and true, also true is the fact that it’s very expensive, because as we speak, some farmer in Bolivia is sowing the seeds of quinoa.
I love dalia. I use it a lot in cooking, especially for breakfast. It’s nutty and is packed with flavours if you pair it with the right ingredients. I was toying with the idea of using dalia in a cake but I let the idea rest for some time, and I let it knock on my brain again; because all great ideas don’t lead to fruition when obsessed with, at least for me.
So, when I was in the midst of watching a crime drama last week and the plot was getting a little too awry, my brain switched off, but when the killer was getting away right in front of the cops, the how-to-use-dalia idea crawled back into my brain. So, I ran a small experimentation in my brain and made note of the ingredients in my phone.
Somehow, the idea of using banana and dalia was very tempting. Dalia, mashed bananas, spelt flour, brown sugar, a dash of oil and eggs – it’s practically a one bowl baking recipe. But the catch with dalia is that its little too grainy, as opposed to plain flour or semolin. But so is the American cornmeal – so I decided to pulse the dalia into a fine flour and passed it through a fine sieve. This step is so important for your cake to come out beautifully, so don’t skip it.
The end result: nutty, dense, gorgeously brown, caramelly (because of the brown sugar) banana loaf that you can have your tea with. I kept it simple, because I was experimenting and I really didn’t know I’d strike success the first time. But feel free to add walnuts or any other nuts of your liking.
- 1 ½ cups dalia (broken wheat), pulsed into fine flour
- 1 cup spelt flour
- 1 cup dark/light brown sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup oil
- 3 ripe bananas, mashed
- ½ tsp vanilla essence
- Preheat oven to 160 C. Grease an 8 inch loaf tin with oil. Set aside.
- Sieve together dalia, spelt flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon into a bowl. Set aside.
- Combine eggs, oil, mashed banana and vanilla essence.
- Combine dry and wet ingredients.
- Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes.
- Cool on wire rack before slicing.
