My daughter has started going through a fussy toddler eating stage. It’s not that she doesn’t like the flavours, it’s because she’s defying me and just wants to be stubborn.
The one thing she will eat though is cake.
So everything that comes out of our kitchen is now called cake.
Savoury quiche for dinner? We’re having “ham cake” for dinner tonight! Hooray!
Breakfast? “It’s tomato and cheese omelette cake” Hooray!
After saying the word cake 3 times a day for the last week, I actually woke up with a craving of cake today but couldn’t be bothered to venture outdoors. With no eggs or milk left in the fridge, I started trawling the internet for vegan recipes and came across this beauty. Tahinopita, a Greek tahini cake that is completely vegan and uses no fat, except for the natural oils found in tahini. Hooray!
This cake is not overly sweet. It is however quite dense and a stick to your teeth kind of cake. The tahini flavour is quite dominant but the subtle orange zest does shine through. Perfect with a cup of tea for breakfast!
Vegan Spiced Tahini and Orange Cake aka Tahinopita
- 1 cup tahini
- 1 cup sugar
- Zest of 1 orange
- ¾ cup orange juice
- Pinch of salt
- 2 ¼ cups plain flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice
- 1 tablespoon oil to grease the cake pan
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease your cake pan of choice
Before you pour a cup of tahini, be sure to use a spoon and give the jar a good mix. Beat tahini, sugar and orange zest for 3-4 minutes until fluffy on a high speed. Gradually and slowly add the orange juice until all combined and smooth.
Meanwhile sift together all the dry ingredients and fold into the tahini mix
The mix will be quite dense and not at all like a traditional cake batter. Pour it into you pre-greased tin and bake for 40 minutes. Let the cake cool down before you remove it from the tin.
Pour yourself a cuppa, sit back and enjoy.
Gourmet Wog 
Yummmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy 🙂 Please Parcel it.. I wanna taste this cake !! 🙂 Hurry Up !!
It’s in the mail 🙂
where? Hey, Lisa are you on facebook?
I am indeed! https://www.facebook.com/GourmetWog
Hahahaha its a Facebook page.. I am talking about Account lol !
I love how you describe your daughter – she sounds just like mine! And cake three times a day? She’s a very lucky girl! xx
Oh Charlie, she’s 2 going onto 19 alright…
Lisa, you are the best mother ever!!! Rather than argue, you work to the strong point. If I come back through reincarnation I want you to be my mother. Remember, I like cake too.
Oh Mumma Maureen, coming from a top Mum, that means the world 🙂 xx
This looks really yummy! I love a good Vegan cake 🙂
Thank you so much Alessandra!
G’day! YUM YUM YUM YUM Lisa, true!
Your recipe and photo look and sound very moist…wish I could come over and enjoy a slice over a cuppa or two! 🙂
Cheers! Joanne
That would be lovely Joanne!! Just a short 3 hour plane ride and we could indeed be enjoying this together 🙂
How clever of you to call everything cake Lisa, you are a very clever mommy and this cake looks like the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea.
Have a happy day.
🙂 Mandy xo
Thank you for your lovely words darling xx
LOL that is so cute! If only I had thought of that when I was little 😛
Cake for all!! xx
Cake for breakfast is always a good thing – and yours looks like it would be especially good. When you say a “fussy toddler eating stage”, you do know it can last don’t you? My daughter is now 13 and still hasn’t grown out of the “fussy toddler eating stage”… good luck!
Oh Sarah, don’t say that!! I’ll have to keep finding new ways to make her eat and keep ontop of the game 🙂
So sweet, cake all day! ‘we are having butter chicken…cake tonight’? Beautiful cake Lisa, I can almost taste this one. 😉
Thanks Amelia! Yes, Butter Chicken Cake sounds…nice?!! LOL xx
Hi Lisa, I love tahini, so I am guessing I would love this cake 🙂 It certainly sounds different.
I think you would Glenda! I made it again over the weekend and instead of sugar, made it with honey and it tasted very much like Greek Halva. Delicious 🙂
Clever way to get your toddler to eat!
Thanks Tandy!! Have to beat her at her own game!
Love it! We have gone through the “cake” stage quite a few times! One of our sons is becoming a passionate hunter and he is going through a picky stage…we have explained to him several times that hunters eat all sorts of foods…even green things 🙂
LOL yes, maybe he can ‘hunt’ for his own greens! Foraging would be a fun day out 🙂
You are such a clever mother…cake three times a day. Love it. 🙂
Thanks so much Karen, trickery works for now. One day soon she’ll realise and we’ll have to think of another way 🙂
Lisa, you cracked me up. I can just hear your daughter, years from now, telling her friends that you were “the best Mum ever!” Feeding her cake every day. 🙂 You Mums have to do whatever it takes to get your kids to eat properly, even if it means serving “cake” 3 times a day, every day.
I tell you, though, this one does sound good — and vegan, too? Wonderful!
Very true John, we do what we have to do!! Thanks so much for your lovely comments 🙂
what a woman your daughter will grow up to be.ake for every meal! bring it on!
is tahini a common baking ingredient? i’ve never heard of cake with tahini in it, but maybe i’m livign a sheltered life here…
Its not at all a common baking ingredient! LOL! It’s a Middle Eastern specialty of crushed sesame seeds. Once you grind sesame seeds, it starts to become a paste, and the oils come out, just like making peanut butter from scratch. It has a very nutty flavour and is traditionally added to hummus and other dips 🙂
That is hilarious Lisa. I love tahini and this looks too easy – I might even be able to get away with using rice flour maybe I think. I’ll give it a go and let you know!
I think rice flour, buckwheat flour or maybe even almond meal would be a nice flour substitute 🙂
I do love the everything is cake idea, fab! And this particularly cakey cake looks wonderful, loving the flower garnish too – is it nasturtium?
It is indeed a nasturtium! You have a good eye 🙂 I polished the cake slice and garnish too both yummy in their own different way
That cake looks yummy and quite dense. How ingenious that it calls for tahini! Ah yes, those stubborn days… they don’t go away completely you know. My 10 year-old comes up with the oddest comments at times. She doesn’t like something and I’ll say, “But you ate it the last time I made it.” And she’ll reply, “Well, I don’t like it anymore!”.
I don’t have a toddler but I think the cake trick could work just as well on my partner 😉 I wonder if I could get away with Brussels Sprouts Cake?
Hi Lisa! I think you could get away with it if its iced with a nice cream cheese frosting!! 😉
lol I love the idea of having cake for breakfast, lunch and tea!
me too! Wish my waist didn’t accept the consequences of that though!
That’s a mouthful of a name for a cake! 🙂 Looks and sounds so exotic though, I’d love to try this one day 🙂 Welcome to the terrible twos of toddlers (or threes for that matter).
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