Grain-free    &&    Refined-sugar-free    &&    Soy-free    &&    Dairy-free    &&    Egg-free

(+ Nut-free Option + Vegan Option)

This cake was something I made for a (human) friend’s birthday; she has some stringent dietary restrictions and was lamenting several weeks ago over not having had the simple pleasure of biting into a soft crumbly piece of cake in years. Since her birthday was coming up, I thought I could probably figure out how to make a tasty chocolate cake that fit with her restrictions: no grains (and no chickpea flour!), no soy, no refined sugar, no dairy, and no eggs. Even though the fat content was way too high to be robot-compatible, I knew making up the recipe would be to be a fun challenge for me, and the end result was (I think) a sweet surprise for her.

I made several test cakes before arriving at the recipe below. (Thanks to all my guinea pig taste-testers!) I still want to iterate on this recipe to make it more user friendly… I know that idle cyborgs with an inexplicable penchant for baking even incompatible cakes (*ahem*) are probably the only ones who just happen to have both lentil flour and coconut flour just sitting around in their cupboards. Hopefully recipe simplifications will be forthcoming, but for now it is what it is. I suggest some substitutions for some of the more obscure ingredients in the list below that I suspect will work fine, but they are untested suggestions, as yet. (But then, where’s the fun in baking if there’s no risk?)

110010 Birthday Cake

Makes one 8″ or 9″ double-layer cake

Bits:

Date Syrup (if not using store bought. Triple recipe and use in place of honey to make cake fully vegan — untested but I think it would work, and sounds tasty.)

• 200 g pitted dates
• 1 ½ cups + 1 Tbsp boiling water

Cake Dry Ingredients

• 320 g lentil flour (substitute chickpea flour if you can eat chickpeas)
• 80 g coconut flour
• 80 g hazelnut flour (store bought, or grind whole hazelnuts in a food processor or spice grinder; use 80 g additional coconut flour to make nut-free — untested but I think it’d work.)
• 96 g (1 cup) non-alkalized (not Dutch-processed) cocoa powder
• 2 ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Cake Wet Ingredients

• 150 g (2/3 cup) coconut oil + extra for greasing
• 341 g (1 cup) honey
• 1 can full-fat coconut milk
• ½ cup date syrup (store bought or homemade from ingredients above)
• ¼ cup water
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting Ingredients (note: I made 2/3 this much to leave the sides of the cake “naked”. Make the below amount if you want to frost the sides.)

• 144 g (1 ½ cups) cocoa powder
• 1 cup + 1 Tbsp (2 sticks + 1 Tbsp) Soy-Free Earth Balance vegan butter, softened
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 256 g (3/4 cup) honey
• 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp date syrup (store bought or homemade from ingredients above)

Algorithm:

Make the date syrup (if not using store-bought): Bring water to a boil, and pour over pitted dates. Let sit at least 15 minutes. Blend soaked dates with their soaking water, preferably in a high-speed blender, until you have a smooth paste. You should end up with a bit more than a cup.

Cake Prep: While the dates are soaking, grease either two 8″ or two 9″ cake pans with coconut oil. (I baked cakes of both sizes with success; the 8″ version turns out quite tall and is what is pictured above. Next time if I make two layers, I’d probably opt for 9″ rounds.) Preheat the oven to about 325 F. Take the butter for the frosting out of the fridge, if you plan to frost the cake soon after it cools.

Make the Cake: Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Be sure to sift the hazelnut flour, if you’re grinding your own in a food processor or spice grinder.

Melt the coconut oil just to the point that it all becomes liquid, and put it in a medium mixing bowl. Add the remaining cake wet ingredients, and stir to combine. If ingredients don’t combine smoothly when stirring by hand, get out the hand mixer and mix until smooth.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Divide the batter evenly between the two greased cake pans. Drop each pan about 50 times from a height of about 3″ above your counter top to get the big air bubbles out of the batter.

Bake the cakes for 40 minutes, give or take a few minutes, rotating once half way through. Cake is done when a toothpick poked into the center just comes out clean (keep a close watch and be careful not to over-bake!). Cool the cakes for 15 minutes in the pans, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Make the frosting: Add frosting ingredients in a deep mixing bowl, and blend with a hand mixer until smooth.

Frost the cake: Frost the top surface of the bottom layer cake and put into the fridge for 15 minutes to set. Remove from fridge, set the remaining cake layer on top, and frost all around. This frosting stiffens up well if cool enough, and would be suitable for piping if you have the piping bags, tips, energy, and inclination.