Gluten-Free Buckwheat Flour Apple Cake for Rosh Hashanah

If you love kasha and are looking for the perfect gluten-free Rosh Hashanah cake, look no further: this buckwheat flour apple cake is just the thing. This cake is slightly adapted from Emiko Davies’s recipe on Food52, which in turn codifies a traditional recipe from the northern Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige. Bordered by Switzerland and Austria to the north, the area has a real mix of Italian and Germanic cultural influences, and that’s especially true when it comes to food.

The buckwheat flour apple cake, known as schwarzplententorte in German or torta di granosaraceno in Italian, reflects its borderland home.  Apples grow abundantly in Alto Adige, and they’re a common ingredient in the cuisine of the region. So is buckwheat, which can be grown in mountainous areas where regular wheat doesn’t survive.

This is a very dense cake, thanks to the combination of buckwheat flour and almond meal, so if you’re looking for something light and fluffy this is not it. But it is a distinctive, delicious, and rich cake that I think is absolutely worth a try—if you like the flavor of buckwheat. It’s got a very distinct earthy taste that’s quite different from wheat flour, which I know is not everyone’s jam. I don’t imagine that this cake would go over great with your average kid, for example. But I liked it.

According to Davies, the oldest versions of this recipe call only for buckwheat flour, with the almond being a modern addition. The traditional filling is lingonberry jam, but I thought adding a hit of plum would be perfect for Rosh Hashanah, so that’s what I did.

Unlike your classic Rosh Hashanah apple cakes, this isn’t super apple-y; the apple serves more to add moisture and texture than anything else. The earthy, nutty flavor of the buckwheat flour is decidedly dominant, with the plum jam sandwiches between the two layers coming in second. I suppose if you wanted to up the apple quotient, you might consider swapping that out for apple butter.

As you might’ve guessed by the inclusion of butter, this is not a traditional Jewish cake. However, if you want to serve it with a meat meal you can easily swap in margarine, or I bet even refined (this is important, as I don’t think the coconut flavor of unrefined would do well here) coconut oil would do the trick.

Buckwheat flour comes in light and dark varieties; I used Bob’s Red Mill, which is dark, hence the somewhat murky color. You can use either variety here; with the light flour, the color would be a better match for a traditional wheat flour cake.

Though I eat kasha (toasted buckwheat groats) on the regular, I think this is my first time baking with buckwheat flour. I’m quite pleased with the outcome, and I look forward to experimenting more in the future. If you want a peek into the history of this underrated seed (yes, it’s a seed, not a grain), check out my post on cabbage varnishkes for the full story.

Gluten-Free Buckwheat Flour Apple Cake for Rosh Hashanah

1 cup / 250 grams / 2 sticks butter or margarine, room temperature

¾ cup / 150 g sugar

6 eggs, separated

2 cups / 250 g buckwheat flour

2 ¼ cups / 250 g almond meal

1 apple, grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

7 oz / 200 g plum jam

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and beat until pale and creamy. Add the buckwheat, almond meal, grated apple, and vanilla extract until just combined.

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold into the batter until well combined, and pour batter into a greased and lined round baking tin (10-inch diameter).

Bake at 350ºF for about 50 minutes or until the cake is deep golden brown on top and a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

When cool enough to handle, remove cake from tin and slice in half lengthways. Spread the bottom layer with the plum jam and replace the top layer.

Sources: “Buckwheat and Apple Cake,” Food52 (Emiko Davies, 2013)