Vanilla Cake Made With Agave

First preheat the oven to 375 Fahrenheit or 190 Celsius. We are going to have a chat here and although it is a little one.  This is important because recently my husband told me my oven would not come on even though the pilot light was lit and I am grateful that he checks on it for me. He knows that oven is heavily used by me because I bake a  lot. Thanks  Mr. Riaz 😀 I appreciate it.

I got a sheet of parchment paper and lined my cake pan with it and set a sauce pan in it to give it some kind of weight to hold it down. I made sure it was clean first.

Ok with that out of the way  we will talk about  how I put this cake together.  I got out a mixing bowl and for the dry ingredients first. I added 6 handfuls of all purpose unbleached flour, 4 pinches of baking powder,  1 pinch of eno, which makes the cakes  light, I got it from Indian and Pakistani grocery stores.  I added 3 handfuls of nido, this too I got in an Indian and Pakistani grocery store. I added 1 drop of vanilla essence I got from Indian and Pakistani grocery stores, 1 pinch of pink salt that I get in the same places and one pinch of mahleb which I can buy them in many Arabic grocery stores. I ground the mahleb which I have whole they are little seeds. I Googled it where it comes from and they come from cherry pits. I ground them in my mortar and pestle before I added the wet stuff on top of the dry stuff in the  mixing bowl.

I added 1 egg, 1 tsp grape seed  oil, grape seed oil  can be found  at  a lot of stores selling products from the  Mediterranean areas such as Greece, Italy, Turkey,  North African countries and from the Middle East.

I added 1/4 cup of agave nectar and 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups of water adding a little at a time until I have a nice batter stirring with my rubber spatula.

I took out my hand mixer and used it for 5 minutes on low speed. You do not want batter splattering everywhere and you do not want a watery batter either. I removed the sauce pan I used as a weight to hold down the parchment paper in the cake pan and added a tiny bit of cooking spray and scraped the bowl again with rubber spatula making sure I got all of the batter added to the cake plate and put it in the oven I had preheated earlier.

This is how my cake looked when it was done baking. I baked it for 20 to 25 minutes  and the fork mark you see in my cakes is to tell me if my cake is done or not so it came out clean and it means cake is done.

Now it is icing time. this too was made of agave. I have been collecting recipes on how  to make cake icing using agave nectar. I found one for chocolate but I did not want a chocolate icing so I ended up coming up with my own again.  I just want to thank the people who  put these recipes out so I can roughly get an idea on how it is done.  So therefore I had nailed this one and it tastes like caramel. 😀

For the icing I used 1 tbs of grape seed oil.  Coconut oil can be used too. I added 1 drop of vanilla essence, 1 pinch of nido, 1/4 cup of agave nectar and 2 pinches of xanthan gum and gave it a mix  and again with electric hand mixer mixed it until I got a nice icing that was nice  and not runny. You do not want a runny icing.

I let the cake cool completely before I had frosted it. The finished product is on top of the post. Please let me know in  the comments how you like this recipe.