The first days of 2018 have been a little bit messy. Slowly recovering from the vacation break and trying to pull myself back to the normal work flow again. However, with every new start, it feels nice to set new goals, polish my vision about my company and fix the next steps to take within the new year. My priority again will be to build up new collaborations and empower our small scale community of creatives. Learn from each other, help ourselves within the roller-coaster of freelancing life, work together and create an amplified beautiful result. Keeping this idea close at heart and making it reality, I officially kicked off this new year last week with my friend Leonardo with this fun shoot in rustic style with a romantic tone. We had so much fun, he helped me to make the most of the nordic natural daylight, we chatted over work and enjoyed this delicious vegan pecan nuts cake with rum, covered with a luscious rum flavored chocolate syrup. We wished everyday was like this! The recipe is one of my favorites so far. It is so well balanced in sweetness and rum flavor tones combined with a rich nutty taste from the crushed pecan nuts in the dough. The chocolate syrup on top adds an extra hit of rum in combination with an intense cacao flavor that makes this cake a dream! Furthermore, it was so fluffy and moist that gives extra points to a plant-based cake as the ones of you experimenting with vegan baking might know! Want to try out this delicious beauty cake too? Scrol down for the recipe & have fun baking! x Alexandra

PECAN RUM CAKE W/ RUM FLAVORED CHOCOLATE SYRUP

Ingredients for a medium bundt cake of 16 cm base diameter

pecan rum cake

350 g all purpose flour
20 g baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
90 g pecan nuts, finely crushed
90 ml sunflower oil
150 g brown sugar
260 ml almond milk or other plant-based milk
2 tablespoons rum liquor or 2 teaspoons rum essence

rum flavored chocolate syrup

120 g white sugar
45 g cocoa powder
150 ml tap water
1 teaspoon rum essence
a pinch of salt

PREPARATION

Preheat the over at 170°C.
In a mixing bowl, sieve the flour and baking powder. Add the salt and mix well. In a second bowl, combine the brown sugar with the almond milk, sunflower oil, rum liquor or essence, finely crushed pecan nuts and stir well – using a whisk. Gradually add the mix of dry ingredients (flour, baking powder & salt) to the bowl with the wet ingredients and mix well – using a spatula – until all ingredients are well combined. Transfer the dough in the cake form that you have previously greased with some baking spray or plant-based butter and bake in preheated oven at 170°C for 45-55 minutes until the cake is properly baked. You can use the toothpick-test to check if your cake is ready. If you dip a toothpick in the centre of the cake and the toothpick comes out clean then the cake is done. If it comes out with pieces of wet unbaked dough, then you need to bake the cake for a couple more minutes. Depending on the depth of your bundt cake form it might take a little bit longer for the cake to be done. When ready remove from the oven and let the cake cool completely on a cooling rack.
While waiting you can prepare the chocolate syrup. In a small cooking pan, combine the white sugar, cocoa powder and tap water. Let the solution simmer on low fire until the syrup thickens but it is still runny enough to decorate your cake. Remove from fire, add the salt and the rum essence and stir well. When the cake is completely cool, add a graceful amount of the chocolate syrup on top and decorate with a few pecan nuts on top.

Enjoy x AM

STYLING

Rustic French kitchen table: Fleur's Depot
Handmade knife: Ting Shop Berlin
Ceramic tableware: JC Herman Ceramics, Annemieke Boots Ceramics, Broste Copenhagen, Kerameio Serifos