Two years ago, I collected some Bunya Pine cones from our Hills Council’s Bidjiwong Nursery, and had also been given a couple of dozen nuts from friends, which I then dehydrated and milled into flour. There was enough to make a cake with the flour, which turned out reasonably good.
In January and February this year I collected more cones from Bidjiwong, and with another volunteer at our Annangrove Community Environment Centre collected dozens of cones from local residents’ trees which they were happy to donate. Then came the real work!
After the cones drop from the tree it can take up to a week or more for them to dry enough to start falling apart so the segments can be separated. Then the nuts need to be shucked from the segments, shelled and dried for processing.
I found the easiest way to shell them was to cut them in half with a pair of sharp garden loppers (scrubbed and sterilized for this job!). They then went into the dehydrator (or oven) and cut side down at 70 degrees for around four hours. This was enough to release the half nuts from the shells and any that weren’t fully released just needed a little nudge with the point of a teaspoon under them. After that, it was back into the dehydrator for another 4 hours, or more depending on the size of the nuts, without the shell to fully dry the kernels.
Once dried, I put them through a blender to break them into smaller pieces and then into a ‘bullet’ blender to grind the pieces down to a powder. I was originally using a coffee grinder for this but it was struggling so I changed to the bullet which was a lot easier and I could do it in bigger batches as well.
Between grinds, I tipped each batch into a sieve, and what was too big to go through went back into the bullet to be processed further. The last crumbs that wouldn’t go through the sieve I put into the coffee grinder which it coped with.
Now for the fun part – experimental cooking!
I first tried the recipe I had done 2 years ago for a bunya flour cake – which wasn’t too bad, but I found it a bit ‘heavy’.
Bunya flour is naturally gluten-free and is quite dense so I experimented with the recipe a bit and reduced the eggs and sugar, used almond milk instead of sour cream and water, and this is what I came up with for Version 4, which is the one I cooked for the recent Regional Gathering we hosted:
Bunya nut syrup cake – from Perri’s Plants to Plate on Facebook (original in black)
Linda’s revised version is in red – gluten and dairy-free. Bunya nuts are naturally gluten-free.
- 2 cups of bunya nut flour (about 20 nuts boiled, shelled dehydrated and ground)
- 1 heaped teaspoon baking powder – 2 rounded teaspoons
- 1 cup of sugar – ¾ cup
- 5 eggs – 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup olive oil. I would have preferred macadamia oil, but didn’t have enough
- (1/2 cup sour cream ) I replaced the sour cream and water with 1/4 cup of water) ½ cup of unsweetened almond milk
- Mix and cook at 130C for about 45 mins, check at 20 mins. Needs a higher temp 160C fan forced for around 30-35 mins
Syrup – but use your own favourite version if you want
- 1/4 cup of ironbark honey – I used Stringy bark honey but any will do
- 5 Lemon Myrtle leaves – finely chopped – I didn’t like the bits of leaf in the syrup so have used ¼ to ½ teaspoons of Lemon Myrtle powder (a little goes a long way in taste) but a squeeze of lemon juice instead works well
- 1 finger lime – I used the pearls from 2-3 small finger limes
- 1/4 cup water
- Boil for about 10 mins
Allow the cake to cool for about 10 minutes before turning out of the pan and pouring syrup over the top.
I haven’t tried this recipe with any flour other than Bunya, but I imagine you could substitute other types of flour to do some experimenting yourself.
Happy cooking (and eating) 😀
All images by Linda Pine