110010 Birthday Cake

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?)

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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.

Not Mac ‘n’ Not Cheese

Grain-free && Very Low Fat && Easily Veganized

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This simple mac ‘n’ cheese recipe is made without traditional macaroni and without cheese, but still tastes cheesy and satisfying like the old classic! The “mac” is replaced with pasta made from chickpea and/or lentil flour, which I’m seeing around more and more these days (such as this and this). You may have to be careful if you can’t tolerate grains though, because I’ve seen some chickpea and lentil pastas that also have rice flour in the ingredients. The cheese-free cheesy taste comes from a combination of nutritional yeast and spices, which won’t be any surprise to vegans.

The addition of fresh chopped tomatoes and some basil or arugula puts this dish over the top for me. If you can’t tolerate tomatoes in your diet for whatever reason, I feel your pain; I had to give them and other acidic foods (and coffee!!) up for about six years until after I got my gastric pacemaker a couple years ago. Fortunately, this recipe is nearly as great, in my opinion (maybe better, in your opinion) with another vegetable mixed in. My go-to substitute for tomatoes in any recipe always used to be roasted red peppers, which I think would work perfectly well here. Really you can mix in anything you want; any combination of fresh herbs, cooked broccoli florets, cubed roasted sweet potato, or roasted fennel would be quite tasty. Or don’t mix anything in, and keep it classic (and more kid-friendly)!

Finally, I make this recipe with some skim milk to keep the final recipe nearly non-fat, but if you are vegan and can handle fat, you can easily substitute the alternative milk of your choice to veganize it.

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Not Mac ‘n’ Not Cheese

Serves 3 hungry adults as a main course

Bits:

Optional veggie mix-ins (pick one, or none):

1 pint halved cherry or plum tomatoes + handful roughly chopped basil leaves
2 large roasted red peppers, chopped + handful arugula
½ lb roasted or steamed broccoli florets
1 lb roasted sliced fennel + small handful roughly chopped fresh parsley
1 ¼ lb cubed roasted sweet potato or butternut squash + small handful roughly chopped fresh sage

For the pasta:

8 oz box of chickpea or lentil grain-free pasta

For the sauce:

Dry:

¼ cup chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp garlic powder
Large pinch of chipotle chili powder (more or less depending on spiciness preference)
½ tsp chili powder
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp smoked paprika
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast

Wet:

1 ¼ cup milk of choice (skim cow milk to keep the dish nearly non-fat, or alternative plant-based milk to make vegan)
¼ cup water
½ tsp of Dijon mustard
1 ½ Tbsp tamari
optional if you can eat fat: 1 Tbsp olive oil

Algorithm:

If adding a vegetable/herb mix-in, prep that first. Roasted vegetables can be roasting while you make the pasta and sauce. If using fresh sage, either dry-fry it or fry it in a little bit of oil to crisp it up.
Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients for the sauce in a small mixing bowl and set aside.
Combine wet ingredients for the sauce in a small sauce pan, and turn the heat on medium-low. Stir continuously until almost simmering. If you let it boil, cow milk might split, so take care.
Remove pan from heat and slowly pour a little bit of the pan liquids into the dry ingredients, and stir to form a paste. Gradually continue to add a little more at a time of the pan liquids into the dry ingredients, stirring as continuously as you can, until the mixture in the mixing bowl is smooth and runny. Add the mixing bowl contents back into the sauce pan. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat. Stir continuously, until the mixture has thickened to a cheese-sauce-like consistency; this should only take a few minutes.
Divide pasta between serving bowls, and pour equal amounts of sauce on each. Add vegetable and herb mix-ins to each bowl, and gently stir until vegetables and herbs are distributed evenly. Devour while still warm.

North-African Spiced Dal with Lime and Curry Leaf Roasted Vegetables

Vegan && Grain-free && Very low fat

North African Red Lentil Dal w Curry Lime Roasted Veggies - top

Like the dish from the previous post, this started as two disparate recipes, but I realized they would probably go quite well together. I’m already a little bit obsessed with dal of any kind, and roasting is pretty much factually and provably the best possible way to cook a veggie. The spices and fresh leaves are the icing on the cake. When I first tasted this dal with the roasted vegetables together all in one bite I had a full-on Ratatouille moment. You know the one, where Remy the rat shows us the magic of two great tastes that taste even greater together. Somehow the result is more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, that was this, for me.

Fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves can be a bit hard to source, but they are definitely worth seeking out. Especially fresh curry leaves; they’re one of my all-time favorite ingredients and I don’t think there is really any good substitute for them. Even dried curry leaves only have a tiny fraction of the flavor you’ll get from fresh or frozen. Fortunately if you can find fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves, they usually keep for at least a couple weeks in the fridge, and for several months in an air-tight container in the freezer! (So stock up when you find them!) In Seattle I’ve found fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves at H-Mart, though to be honest, the curry leaves there can be a little sad-looking (the leaves should be bright green, not brown). My absolute favorite place to get fresh curry leaves is a little Indian grocery in Shoreline called Indian Sweets & Spices. Definitely check them out if you can. They’ve got a nice selection of organic dals, grains, and spices as well.

Don’t be intimidated by the long ingredients list; half of it is just spices. Both parts of this dish are pretty easy. Most of the time to make the roasted vegetables is hands-off, so you can use that time to put the dal together.

North African Red Lentil Dal w Curry Lime Roasted Veggies - side

Adapted from KCET’s Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Curry Roasted Root Vegetables with Lime from his (genius, amazing, beautiful) book Plenty More

Serves 6 generously, as a full meal (more if you add rice)

Prep and cook time: about an hour

Bits

– Roasted Veg

4 large carrots (about 900g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
4 medium parsnips (about 750g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
1 rutabaga (about 400g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
Oil in a spray can (optional)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp curry powder
4 fresh or frozen kaffir lime leaves (2 stems), finely sliced
30-40 fresh or frozen curry leaves still on their stems
5 green onions, white and green parts, sliced on the diagonal
small handful chopped parsley

-Dal

1 large onion, finely chopped
1/2-inch thumb of ginger, finely diced (1 heaping tsp)
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 green chile / jalapeño, de-seeded for milder spice if desired, finely diced
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp rasam powder (or substitute 1 tsp curry powder)
2 Tbsp tomato paste
3 cups water
3 cups vegetable broth (I really like Organic Imagine Vegetarian No-Chicken Broth)
2 cups red lentils, rinsed in several changes of water, until water runs clear
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 sprigs (or to taste) fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped

Algorithm

Roast the vegetables:
- Heat the oven to 425F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Toss carrot, parsnip, and rutabaga batons together and spray lightly with oil, if using. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, 1 1/2 Tbsp lime juice, and curry powder, and toss to evenly coat.
- Roast 30 minutes, tossing once half way through.
- Add lime leaves, curry leaves on their stems, and green onions. Roast about another 10 minutes until the green onions have softened, but remove from oven if the curry leaves start to brown.
- Remove curry leaves from their stems; discard the stems and add curry leaves back to the baking sheet with the vegetables. Sprinkle over the remaining 1 1/2 Tbsp lime juice and cilantro, and toss everything together once more.
Make the dal while the vegetables are roasting:
- Add onion to a large sauce pan, or dutch oven over medium heat. Stir for about 5 minutes until onion starts to become translucent (moisture released from the onion itself will keep it from sticking and burning in the pot; no oil needed!).
- Add ginger, garlic, and chile; cook for 2 more minutes, stirring occasionally to keep anything from burning. Add the spices through the rasam (or curry) powder, and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in tomato paste, and cook for 1 more minute.
- Add water, broth, and lentils. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and partially cover. Simmer vigorously for about 15 minutes until the lentils are starting to fall apart.
- Stir in salt, lemon juice and the mint. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.
To serve: Ladle the dal into deep bowls. Top with a generous serving of roasted vegetables. Sprinkle with any extra mint or parsley, as desired.

Fennel, Kale, and Chickpea Skillet with Citrus Baked Polenta

Vegan && Grain-free && Very low fat

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This is a harmonious mish-mash of two great recipes I came across recently, along with some changes of my own, of course. My partner always tells me to make a new recipe as written the first time, and then make whatever changes I want the next time around; it makes sense to experience the recipe as intended and go from there. Out loud I usually respond with a “Yeahhhhh, you’re right”, but then quietly I make my changes anyway. I have no regrets. I won’t judge if you want to take your own spin on any of my recipes the first time you make them either.

No regrets!

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Oven-Baked Creamy Polenta (my go-to polenta recipe!), and the Kitchn’s Couscous with Chickpeas, Fennel and Citrus

35 Minutes

4 Servings

Bits:

– Polenta

3/4 cup medium grind polenta
zest and juice (~1/4 cup) of 1 navel orange
zest and 1 Tbsp juice of 1 lemon
2 3/4 cups water
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp milk of choice, depending on preferred consistency

– Skillet

1 large fennel bulb, fronds removed and reserved
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp rasam powder, or curry powder
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 small bunch kale
3 cups chickpeas, canned or cooked from dried
1 Tbsp lemon juice, plus more to taste
Small handful of parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Algorithm:

First make the polenta. Preheat the oven to 425F. In big flat baking dish (mine is 10″x10″) with a lid, combine all the polenta ingredients except for the milk. Give everything a quick stir, and put in the oven with the lid on. Bake 15 minutes, stir, and bake 15 more minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes stir in the milk, using more or less depending on the consistency you like.
While the polenta is baking, make the skillet.
- Quarter the fennel bulb from top to bottom, and cut out the dense core from the bottom. Slice cross-wise into ~1/2-inch slices. Place into a large (10-12″) non-stick skillet and dry-fry for 7 to 9 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it starts to turn a caramel-y golden color; add a tablespoon at a time of water as needed if it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Add the ground coriander, rasam powder (or curry powder if you don’t have a good rasam), and salt. Stir and cook for about a minute until fragrant.
- Slice the kale greens off of the central stems, and slice cross-wise into 1-inch strips. Add these to the skillet; stir and cook about 3-4 minutes until they start to wilt.
- Add the chickpeas to the skillet and cook a couple minutes until warmed through. Take a taste and add more spices as desired.
- Add the lemon juice to the skillet, give everything a final couple stirs to mix through, and remove from heat.
Spoon cooked polenta onto serving plates or into bowls and top with the skillet mixture. Generously garnish with chopped parsley leaves (normally I’d say parsley is an optional garnish, but it really adds something to the finished dish here!).