Chestnut Coffee Cake
I make mine into mini coffee cakes, but you can also use a larger baking dish.
Our friend Kate Ray shares this chestnut-spelt coffee cake recipe. We encourage you to sign up for her substack for many more amazing recipes — most are vegan and many focus on Hudson Valley and Northeast regional ingredients.
Kate Says:
Today I’m sharing a chestnut coffee cake, with a moist, nutty cake layer and a sweet-salty crumble made up of chestnut flour, brown sugar, toasted pecans, and cinnamon. My friend Leanne recently tried it and described it as “if a tree was a soft and sweet and you could bite into it.” I dunno about you but there’s something about the beautiful colors of autumn that always make me want to bite a tree.
This recipe isn’t terribly sweet, so you could have it for breakfast or an afternoon snack. I love the pairing of spelt and chestnut flour, so it’s 100% wholegrain. The recipe also makes a high proportion of streusel to cake (think NY-style coffee cake), but if you’d rather have a thinner layer, you can make ½ or ¾ the amount of streusel. (Or if you have extra streusel you can eat it with yogurt.)
Notes
The photos above show 12 mini coffee cakes, but you can use anything that holds about 10-12 cups of batter — like a 9” or 10” square pan, 11”x7” rectangular pan, or 10” springform pan. That’s a lot of cake, which is great for entertaining, but if it’s just for you and one or two other people, you can halve the whole recipe and bake in a smaller pan, and bake for closer to 45 minutes. Feel free to ask in the comments if you want some advice about scaling or pan size.
I’ve included volume measurements because I know people without kitchen scales (usually I buy them one) but highly recommend you use a scale and the weight measurements!
Ingredients
Makes 12 mini coffee cakes or 1 large cake
Streusel:
120 grams (½ cup) coconut oil, melted
150 grams (¾ cup) brown sugar
200 grams (2 cups) fine chestnut flour
130 grams (about 1 cup) toasted pecans, chopped finely
30 grams (2 tablespoons) water
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon sea salt
For the cake:
320 grams (1½ cups) soy milk (or another non-dairy milk)
40 grams (3 tablespoons) apple cider vinegar
160 grams (about 1¼ cups) apple (cored but unpeeled), roughly chopped
50 grams (¼ cup) aquafaba
130 grams (½ cup plus 2 tablespoons) olive oil
100 grams (⅓ cup) maple syrup
50 grams (⅓ cup) ground flaxseed
200 grams (1 cup) brown sugar
200 grams (2 cups) spelt flour (see Note)
200 grams (2 cups) fine chestnut flour, sifted if clumpy
1 teaspoon sea salt
1½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
Spices: 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon allspice, a few grinds of nutmeg and black pepper. (Note: Feel free to alter this spice mix. Add cardamom, cloves, or star anise if you want, or if you have some kind of pumpkin spice or chai mix, or even Chinese 5-spice, use about 2 teaspoons of that. I love the way black pepper brings out the sharpness of the other spices, so I tend to use a lot.)
Method
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease mini-cake tins or cake pans.
Make the streusel: In a medium bowl, combine all of the streusel ingredients. Spread out on a sheet tray or plate and leave to chill in the fridge.
Add the soy milk and apple cider vinegar to a blender and let sit for a couple minutes to curdle slightly.
Add the apple, aquafaba, olive oil, and maple syrup. Blend on high until the mixture is uniform.
Pour into a large bowl and mix in the flaxseed and brown sugar.
In another bowl, whisk together the spelt flour, chestnut flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spice mix. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix — scraping down the sides of the bowl — until just combined.
Pour the batter into the prepared dish(es). Sprinkle the streusel evenly on top.
Bake for 30-35 minutes for small cakes, or 50-55 minutes for larger cakes. A cake tester inserted into the center should come out clean.
Let the cake cool. It’s easiest to cut and serve right from the pan, unless you’ve baked small ones or used a springform pan. To store, wrap well in plastic and leave at room temperature for 4-5 days. Freeze for longer storage.