The Native Seeds

Weekend Herb Blogging comes back to Kalyn this week. And for this edition, I have chosen something Australian to feature – wattle seeds.

Wattle seeds may be new to some of us, but they have been used by the Australian Aboriginal communities for a long time. Wattle seeds come from a range of acacia tree species. According to this link, out of 900 plus species of Acacia, only 100 species are suitable for human consumption.

Roasted and ground, wattle seeds have a wonderful light nutty, chocolaty and coffee aroma. I have read that these seeds are useful in baking. However, I don’t recall seeing a lot of products contain wattle seeds here in Australia. Furthermore, these seeds are generally not available at normal supermarkets. I bought mine as a native speciality from a gourmet shop .

My first experiment with wattle seeds is in this flourless apple and almond cake which comes from Nigella Lawson’s Feast. To my surprise, the original recipe does not contain any flavouring ingredients, i.e. no cinnamon or even vanilla. Having made it once, I found that although the cake had wonderful texture and taste, it still had an unpleasant ‘eggy’ aroma. To fix this, wattle seeds were added to lend some aromatic coffee fragrance to the product. The new combination proved to be wonderful. The cake turned out moist, buttery (even though no butter is used) and aromatic. Great with a cup of coffee or tea.

Wattle Seed, Apple and Almond Cake

Adapted from this book

Ingredients

3 tart apples (I used Granny Smith)

2 tablespoons lemon juice, divided

2 teaspoons castor sugar

8 eggs

325g ground almonds

275g castor sugar

50g slivered or sliced almonds

1 tsp wattle seed

Icing sugar, to serve

Method

For the apple puree: Peel, core and roughly chop apples. Place in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 2 tsp sugar, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cover, reduce heat, and cook for about 10 minutes, or until you can mash apple into a rough puree with a wooden spoon or fork. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease 10-inch springform pan and line bottom with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a food processor, add eggs, ground almonds, sugar, wattle seeds, cooled apple mixture and remaining tablespoon of lemon juice, and whiz until combined. Pour batter into prepared pan, sprinkle with almonds and bake for about 45 minutes. Check after 35 minutes and test doneness with a toothpick inserted in center (should be nearly clean).

Cool. Lightly dust with icing sugar before serving.