This week’s “Plant to Plate”: Sunflower

“Plant to Plate: Native Plant Foods from the Americas” is a series that introduces you to different plants from the Americas through a brief history, tips for cooking, eating and growing, along with a recipe.

This week’s feature: the Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

Recipe: Chocolate Sunflower Cake

Sunflower seeds have a light, nutty flavor that is complimented perfectly by chocolate, making this chocolate sunflower cake such a delicious treat. This recipe is potentially a labor-intensive experience (if you make everything from scratch as the recipe directs you) but you can easily simplify the recipe by making substitutions with instant pudding for the filling and pre-made frosting for the chocolate icing. 

I’ll admit now that I took the easy route by using subsitutions, mainly because I did not have access to a double boiler.

A brief history

The beautiful domestic sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a fast-growing annual belonging to the aster family, Asteraceae. The showy head of a sunflower, what is considered by many to be the “flower,” is actually made up of hundreds of smaller flowers called florets. These florets eventually mature into sunflower seeds, which may be extracted for oil or eaten as a snack.

Wild sunflowers grow in many parts of North America, but their seeds are much smaller than the sunflower seeds you might see in the grocery store today. People living in eastern or central North America four to six thousand years ago were probably the first to domesticate the plant. Domestication led to larger seeds and a dependency on human propagation.

Researchers believe that domestic sunflowers followed travelling humans to other parts of North America as a camp following weed. When they reached the Southwest, sunflowers integrated themselves into the local cuisine. Apache, Chiracaua, Havasupai, and Mojave people all grind the seeds into flour for cooking.     

Do it yourself!

Make your own sunflower seeds! Sunflowers are easy to grow and well suited for the Colorado climate. Choose a drought resistant variety, plant in a sunny spot in your garden, and water occasionally. When the head of the flower turns yellow/brown, you can cut it off, store it in a dry place for several weeks, and harvest the seeds when the head is dry enough that they fall out.

Cooking

As I mentioned before, the cake recipe below directs you to make everything from scratch. If you don’t have a double boiler to make the icing and filling, don’t sweat it, simply buy instant pudding for the filling and pre-made frosting to ice the cake. This will cut down your time significantly. All your hard work will pay off in the end, though, because this cake is unique, not too sweet and flavorful. 

Note: I baked this cake on the East Coast while I was visiting my parents, so it is important to note that if you are cooking at high altitude in Colorado, you might want to make some adjustments to the recipe. High altitude baking adjustments can be done simply by adding 2-3 extra tablespoons of flour and 2 -4 tablespoons of water (for 5,000-7,000 ft above sea level) as well as raising the baking temperature to about 375°F

Chocolate Sunflower Cake

Chocolate Sunflower Cake

Yield: Serves 8 to 12

Time: 45 minutes to 1 hour

Cake Ingredients:

⅔ cup raw sunflower kernels

 ¾ cup all purpose flour

3 tablespoons cocoa

2 teaspoons baking powder

5 eggs

¾ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ cup sunflower oil

Directions: Line the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans with waxed paper and grease the sides of the pans with waxed paper. In a food processor, blend the sunflower kernels to a coarse flour consistency. Mix well with the flour, cocoa and baking powder and add in the ground sunflower kernels then set aside. Separate eggs into the whites and yolks. Beat 5 egg whites with salt until stiff. Beat oil with egg yolks then add to egg whites and sugar. Continue beating until mixed. Fold in flour mixture. Pour into pans. Bake at 350°F (or 375°F for high altitude) for 15 minutes. Turn out onto racks; peel off waxed paper. Cool. Take one cake section and place top down on plate. Spread with vanilla filling (or instant vanilla pudding). Top with second cake layer; frost with chocolate icing.

Vanilla Filling Ingredients (or just buy instant vanilla pudding):

            ⅓ cup sugar

            3 tablespoons flour

            ¼ teaspoon salt

            3 eggs

            1 cup warmed milk

            1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions: Into top of double boiler, mix sugar, flour and salt. Gradually blend in 1 slightly beaten egg, 2 slightly beaten egg yolks and milk, stirring until smooth. Cook and stir until mixture thickens. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla. Cool to room temperature.

Chocolate Icing Ingredients (or just buy chocolate frosting):

            1 tablespoon butter

            4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

            ⅓ cup whipping cream

            1 ¾ cups powdered sugar

            1 teaspoon vanilla

            ¼ raw or roasted sunflower kernels

Directions: In top of double boiler, melt butter and chocolate. Add whipping cream and mix well using a wire whip. Remove from heat and add powdered sugar and vanilla. Ice top and sides of cake. Sprinkle top of cake with sunflower kernels.

Slice of Chocolate Sunflower Cake

[Cake recipe from the National Sunflower Association]

Sources

Scully, Lizzy. “How to Grow Sunflowers in Colorado.” eHow.

Smith, Bruce D, C W. Cowan, and Michael P. Hoffman.Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007.

Rosengarten, Frederic. The Book of Edible Nuts. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 2004.

Vollmann, Johann, and Istvan Rajcan. Oil Crops. New York: Springer, 2009