After slaying everyone at home with a slew of sourdough breads, I thought it was time to continue the harassment but in a sweeter form 😎

Sourdough (SD) baking has bitten me hard (I hope you have been following the saga) and I have great aspirations of using it in traditional as well as unusual ways. While SD cakes are not uncommon, this Buttermilk cake is the first non bread, non cracker recipe using SD, which I am documenting here.

But I must tell you that I have also ventured into far more exciting things and this is just a precursor to a whole lot of other upcoming SD surprises in future. You will see them in the days to come, provided of course, you are very very good and you subscribe to and follow my blog diligently 😀 Do it … you will not regret it.

Now let us move on to our cake. Do not be underwhelmed by its appearance, for though my cake may not win prizes in the aesthetics department, it has turned out to be quite wonderful where taste and texture are concerned.

So all that SD madness causes me to have a tempting amount of starter on hand most of the time. Coupled with this, is the sudden weekly appearance of buttermilk that is produced when I churn the week’s stash of curd cream that I collect everyday from the curds that I set.

The SD of course has been instrumental in my baking and eating more crackers in the last 4 months than in my entire life. And the buttermilk hitherto used to be utilized in my Indian dishes like Buttermilk curry (Moar kuzhambu) and even to condition my hair 😀 I have also baked breads etc with it in the past but never really noted down the recipes.

So when I had them both at hand, I decided to marry them together and bake a cake for a change. Browsing for such recipes and sifting through the ones that pop up and persisting until I found one that appealed to me, I found that I had landed at the doorstep of Baked – The Blog A tiny sense of deja vu and a little bit of further investigation, made me realize that this was the same blog from which I had adapted my Sourdough Bagels recipe.

There are so many blogs in the universe and I usually like to try out new ones and not repeat the old. But fate led me here again and who was I to spurn a good cake recipe? 😀 Of course, the recipe on the blog was for SD buttermilk muffins and was called Sourdough Morning Glory Muffins.

While I did follow the basic premise, I must say that I made quite a few changes to suit my situation and this involved modifying and eliminating some ingredients, adding an unusual one like tamarind chutney and of course the most important change … using Whole Wheat Flour (WWF) instead of maida aka All Purpose Flour (APF) because if you have followed me well, you will know that I use APF/Bread flour only for my breads and all my other bakes are always wholegrain.

And yes, I also baked this cake into mini loaves instead of muffins. This, I attribute to sheer laziness, since I had 4 mini loaf tins at hand which I had prepared in anticipation of baking bread (or should I say EVEN more bread 😎) and I thought it would be quicker and easier to use these.

But there is a reason why doing the muffin thing makes more sense. The cakes are really soft and it is easier to eat them in muffin form, which does not necessitate slicing them and making a crumbly little mess. So next time, muffin or nuffin … but for now, it’s the tin for the win (and other such lame rhymes).

Update – I did manage the muffins using this very same recipe so you may now enjoy these updated pictures too. Really not pretty but very hearty and robust.

Recipe for Honey Buttermilk Sourdough Cake – 

Time –

Prep time – 20 minutes

Baking time – 40 – 50 minutes

Ingredients –

Dry ingredients –

WWF – 250 gm

Baking powder – 1 teaspoon

Baking soda – 1 teaspoon

Salt – 1/2 teaspoon

Cinnamon powder – 1 teaspoon

Nutmeg powder – 1/2 teaspoon

Ginger powder – 1 teaspoon

Wet ingredients –

Whole Wheat Flour (WWF) Sourdough starter or discard – 100 gm (See notes)

Honey – 150 gm

Orange rind – 1 tablespoon

Chopped orange peel – 2 tablespoon (optional)

Fresh grated coconut – 50 gm

Christmas fruit – 100 gm

Buttermilk – 180 gm

Oil – 100 gm

Eggs – 2

Tamarind chutney – 1 tablespoon (optional, see notes)

Topping – 

Almonds – 15 gms

Method – 

Prepare the pans by greasing them and lining with parchment.

Preheat the oven to 180 deg c.

Coarsely powder the almonds in a mixer. I freeze my almonds and then pulse them with the skin on. Set them aside for the topping.

Sift the dry ingredients thrice and set aside.

Add the wet ingredients into a large bowl and mix gently.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet in 3 batches and whisk  manually or with an electric beater, till just incorporated.   Do not overbeat.

Pour the batter into the prepared tins.

(If you are making muffins instead of loaves, then pour the batter into a muffin pan lined with muffin liners)

Place the tins in the oven and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer pierced through the cakes, comes out clean.

Temperatures and timings are oven dependent and the above data is a guideline.

This cake can be stored for 3 days in an airtight box at room temperature or for a week in the refrigerator. You can slice and cling wrap and freeze it in an airtight box for a month.

Notes – 

You can use freshly fed starter or even discard. If you need to refresh your starter or build it up t the required weight, then start the process at least 6 hours before beginning to make the cake.

Tamarind chutney is optional but I used it because it was staring at me from the fridge and I wanted to teach it a lesson.

I hope you will successfully try this recipe and I would really appreciate if you leave your feedback in the Blog comments.

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