A good cup of coffee is only matched by a good slab of pound cake.

Can I just tell you how sick I am of people flaunting their cinnamon buns on Pinterest? If you are gluten, grain and sugar free it's really an impossible situation. Oh sure I've seen others with their recipes that require you to soak your hands in oil to prepare the dough and others that ask you to do the impossible... like level 9 baking skills required... it's just not for me. I need something relatively foolproof. I'm not cake boss. 

Let's not even talk about walking through an airport and the smell of those cinnamon buns following you everywhere to remind you that life is a bit unfair sometimes.

But wait! It's the smell yes... but that smell is just old fashioned Cinnamon and butter. And HELLO? We can have cinnamon and butter. And Pecans too. 

Hmmmm. I've made Cinnamon Bun Muffins and they were darn good. True. But then I made this awesome pound cake last week and I realized, a few tweaks here and there, I might be able to have something quite astonishing. So today's experiment (yes, I said experiment) will be a challenge for sure. But if I pull it off, I'm going to be in cinnamon cake heaven. Plus I'll have an awesome breakfast tomorrow. 

The thing is the pound cake I made is heavy and dense. Dense enough to toast lightly and make french toast. I'm thinking about that as I prepare to explore the depths of low carb baking. So if this is successful, tomorrow morning I'm going to be experimenting some more. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's try making the cake first. First, you will need your ingredients at room temp, so make sure you give yourself enough time on this.

Preheat oven to 325 and grease a non-stick (dark coat) large 9 x 5 loaf pan. 

Maple Pecan Cinnamon Swirl Pound Cake:

2 cups Almond flour
1 tablespoon Baking Powder

2 Tablespoons hemp protein powder

2 tablespoons coconut flour

2 tablespoons peanut flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon maple extract
4 large organic eggs room temp
1 stick softened (half cup or 8 tablespoons) organic butter, unsalted, or Ghee.

1 bar full fat cream cheese, softened (8 0z)
1 cup sweetener  Swerve

Cinnamon Swirl:

2 tablespoons cinnamon

3 tbl melted unsalted butter

4 tabelspoons swerve

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 teaspoon maple extract

Maple Pecan topping:

1/4 cup swerve

1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 tablespoons cream

1 teaspoon maple extract

1/4 cup broken pecans

Cake:

Whisk all dry ingredients EXCEPT swerve together in a medium bowl.

In a large mixing bowl, beat swerve (or preferred granular sweetener), butter and cream cheese till smooth. Add eggs, one at a time and mix well. add maple extract and mix well. Slowly add in dry ingredients, pausing to mix periodically until smooth. Don't flip out over the green coloring from the hemp. it'll go away. I'm not sure I can give all the credit to Hemp... but I gotta say, when you're trying to create a cake that holds together without gluten and wheat flour? Hail to the Hemp people... it works!!!!!

Pour batter into loaf pan and let rest while you make the cinnamon swirl.

In a small bowl, Whisk Cinnamon, butter, swerve and maple until thick and creamy. Gently mix in chopped nuts. Pour mixture in a stream across the top of the cake batter horizontally.

With a small knife or spatula, gently swirl into the batter. Make sure to swirl downwards (I was in a hurry and didn't) or your swirl will all be at the top! Tap the pan to let the it settle and rest evenly. 

Bake about an hour or until set and firm. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack or 15 minutes, then turn out on rack to finish cooling.

When cool, make your caramel sauce. I learned about sugar free caramel from www.alldayidreamaboutfood.com. Fabulous fabulous blog, if you haven't stopped by, do so. Carolyn Ketchum has AMAZING recipes. 

Melt Swerve over low heat with a tablespoon of water, once liquified, add the butter and continue stirring about 7 minutes until color is darkening to an amber. Remove from heat and add cream and extract. 

Careful during this process, it will bubble immediately and might splatter up. Once mixed in return to heat and let bubble another minute. Stir in broken pecans and cook on low another minute. Remove from heat and cool until thick and pourable, just 2-3 minutes. Drizzle over cake with the nuts on top and let the caramel drip down the sides and your done. Refrigerate for best results. 

Truth time. I accidentally made a double batch of caramel. My husband loves it so I used it all. That's why it covered the whole cake. It shouldn't. Trust me it'll be way too sweet to have with your morning coffee. And I will be having this one with my morning coffee. It was incredible. Our wheat flour, gluten glutton friends will never know this is gggfree. It has the absolute feel of a perfect breakfast cake. Or dessert. Or afternoon snack. Just plain Yum.