Time to use up leftover almond meals

My roommate and I dug in before the almond honey cake could cool!

A problem with obsession is you tend to dedicate so much time, effort, and resources, and at the same time ignoring your conscious and abandoning your senses. When the crave fades, however, you're left with a big mess. You question yourself, what have I done? have I lost my mind?

What I have in my kitchen is bag after bag of almond meal--some are grounded with the brown almond skin; some are silky and some lumpy. They serve as constant remainder that I only made one successful batch of macarons with a frill out of I don't know how many batches.

Time to get rid of them. And lower my blood sugar from regular stuffing of tasty almond sugar cookies.

Urgh but almond meal have such limited use. After googling some almond meal recipes, I found out that people mainly make muffins or financier from them. Nothing really arouse my interest until I stumbled across Mmingcook's almond-honey cake post!

No guilt cake for tea time!

What surprised me was her recipe used neither flour nor sugar. Also the ingredient list was short and very accessible. Any home baker would have baking powder, honey, salt, and eggs at home. So preparing the ingredients was no biggy.

Maybe not everyone has honey at home. I didn't have the liquid type of honey the recipe called for, all I have is some honey solid I got from Shanghai. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of honey, so I dissolved 2 tablespoon of the honey below with half a cup of boiling water. Then let the honey dissolve and add the mixture with the rest of the ingredients when the mixture cooled a little.

If you don't have honey, I think you can use sugar instead, but be sure add some liquid. The batter can be very heavy. I thought I made a total mess by substituting honey water for honey because when I poured the batter into my brownie pan, the batter didn't form a smooth ribbon-like texture. I had to dump the thing into the pan. But the cake came out very fluffy. 

I guess the lack of gluten from flour contributes to the lightness. Plus the egg whites helped the cake rise a little, and perhaps the hot water helped too? Like how fluffy cupcakes sometimes call for hot liquid? Anyways if you're looking for a light alternative to tea cake, definitely try this recipe. 

PS If you don't have almond meal on hand, simply pulse 2 cups of almonds with some confectioner's sugar. Adding the sugar absorbs some almond oil that might sip out in the blending process.