Almond and blueberry slice, naturally sweetened

Six dollars for a punnet of blueberries at the Eveleigh Farmers Market last Saturday, which is a fair price for Sydney in late spring but still made me pause before buying three. I bought three anyway. What I love about this time of year is that the fruit doesn’t need much done to it, and this slice is really just a vehicle for good blueberries held together with almond meal, eggs and enough maple syrup to make it feel like dessert without tipping into the sort of sweetness that makes your teeth ache by three in the afternoon.

This isn’t a health food pretending to be cake. It’s a properly good slice that happens to be naturally sweetened, dairy-free if you use coconut oil, and gluten-free because almond meal does the heavy lifting instead of flour. I’ve made it three times this fortnight, once with fresh berries from the market and twice with the frozen bag from the freezer at Harris Farm on Oxford Street, and honestly the frozen version held its shape slightly better because the berries don’t bleed as much moisture into the batter while it bakes.

Why almond meal carries this slice

Almond meal has more fat and protein than flour and almost no starch, which changes how a batter behaves. It won’t rise the way a sponge does, and if you’re expecting light and airy you’ll be disappointed. What you get instead is a dense, moist crumb that’s closer to a French financier than a muffin, and it stays that way for three or four days in an airtight container on the bench, which is more than I can say for most slices made with regular flour. The eggs bind it, the coconut oil keeps it from drying out, and the baking powder does just enough lifting to stop it feeling like a brick.

The CSIRO’s healthy eating guidance points to nuts as a good source of unsaturated fats and fibre, which is part of why almond meal works so well here beyond just flavour. It’s not a health claim I’d lean on too hard, but it’s nice to know the base of the slice is doing something useful nutritionally, not just holding the fruit together.

Ingredients

• 200g almond meal
• 45g rolled oats
• 80ml pure maple syrup
• 3 large eggs
• 80ml coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Pinch of sea salt
• 225g fresh or frozen blueberries
• 2 tbsp flaked almonds
• 1 tbsp extra maple syrup, for brushing (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C fan-forced. Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper, letting it overhang two sides so you can lift the slice out later.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, maple syrup, melted coconut oil and vanilla until the mixture looks glossy and slightly thickened, about a minute by hand.
3. Add the almond meal, oats, baking powder, lemon zest and salt. Fold through with a spatula until just combined. The batter will be thick, closer to a muffin batter than a cake batter, and that’s correct.
4. Gently fold through two-thirds of the blueberries, being careful not to crush them too much or the whole batter turns purple. Pour into the prepared tin and smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
5. Scatter the remaining blueberries and the flaked almonds over the surface, pressing them down very slightly so they don’t roll off during baking.
6. Bake for 32 to 38 minutes, until the top is golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs. If using frozen berries, add an extra 5 minutes and check the centre carefully, as they release more liquid.
7. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then lift out using the paper overhang and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing. Brush with the extra maple syrup while still warm if you’d like a glossy top.
8. Cut into 12 to 16 pieces, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

The bit that makes the kitchen smell right

The smell when it hits the pan isn’t really the moment here, it’s more the last ten minutes in the oven, when the lemon zest and warm almond meal start to smell almost like frangipane. That’s the giveaway that it’s close to done, along with the blueberries on top starting to blister slightly and go a bit jammy at the edges. I trained on the pastry side of the kitchen years ago, and the thing nobody tells you about almond-based bakes is how much they rely on smell rather than sight for doneness, because the colour change is subtler than a flour-based cake.

A serving idea for the afternoon

I like this slightly warm, with a small dollop of natural yoghurt rather than cream, which cuts through the richness of the almond meal instead of adding to it. It also sits nicely alongside a pot of tea for afternoon visitors, in the same register as the coconut and mango chia parfait or the raspberry and ricotta mousse verrine if you’re building out a small dessert table for a weekend lunch. For breakfast, and I do eat this for breakfast more often than I’d admit, a wedge with a black coffee is genuinely enough.

One variation worth trying, and one honest note

Swap the blueberries for stewed rhubarb in autumn, similar to the approach in my chia pudding with stewed rhubarb, and you get a completely different but equally good slice, a bit more tart and less sweet overall. Raspberries work too, though they break down faster than blueberries so fold them through more gently and expect a pinker crumb.

The honest note: don’t bother making this with fresh blueberries out of season, when they’re eight or nine dollars a punnet and taste of not much. Frozen berries, picked and snap-frozen at peak ripeness, will genuinely give you a better result for less money most of the year, and I’d argue anyone telling you fresh is always better hasn’t actually done the side-by-side. This is one of those recipes where the effort is entirely reasonable, maybe forty minutes start to finish, and it keeps well enough to make on a Sunday for the week ahead, similar in that sense to the apple and berry muffins I make on high rotation for school lunches.

If you want a broader sense of where naturally sweetened baking sits within everyday eating, the Eat for Health guidelines are a sensible place to check where treats like this one fit into a normal week, and the Nutrition Australia site has some good, unfussy explainers if you’re curious about swapping sugars in your own baking rather than following a recipe to the letter.

I’ll make this again this weekend, probably with whatever’s cheapest at the market, and that’s really the point of it.

— Mei Lin, Golden Door Living kitchen