Happy Birthday to Me!
What better way to celebrate than with cake and presents?
Presents for you! Bob’s Red Mill sent me a few gluten-free flours mixes to try out (coconut flour, hazelnut meal/flour, and teff flour), and to giveaway. Bob’s Red Mill is a great company, and I use many of their products for my baking.
Coconut flour has to be one of my favorite gluten-free, grain-free flours. Made from the fiber of coconuts, it has a light sweetness without the carbs. This cake and my brownie recipe are my favorite ways to use it. Check out my coconut flour pinterest board for more ideas.
~This cake is too good to be true. My whole family enjoyed it. Gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, grain-free, and, of course, sugar-free! Inspired by my Grain-Free Fudge Brownie Recipe.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 5 dates
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/4 cup milk-substitute (I used unsweetened almond milk) whisked with 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar to create vegan buttermilk.
- 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
- 1/3 cup dairy-free milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375*.
- Blend the dates into a paste. Add wet ingredients and stir until well-combined.
- In a separate bowl combine all dry ingredients and stir until lumps are gone.
- Combine wet and dry until well combined. Mix very thoroughly to ensure there aren’t any date chunks. The dates are the natural sweetness in the recipe. Feel free to add more dates if needed to suite your sweet tooth. The 5 dates make a dark chocolate cake, more may be needed for more sweetness.
- Lightly grease a round 9" cake pan (I used coconut oil), and pour batter into dish. Bake for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Blend peanut butter and milk until creamy and fluffy. You may add dates to the frosting as well if desired. Adjust liquid to suit your frosting thickness preference.
- Once cake is cooled, spread frosting on cake and top with Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, like this cake. Or mix a small amount of coconut oil with cocoa powder, and drizzle on top of cake (as shown in pictures).
- Chocolate: Click HERE for a post I wrote earlier about the health benefits of chocolate.
- Coconut: Coconut is widely misunderstood because of it’s high fat content; however, coconut’s saturated fat is made up of medium-chain fatty acids. These medium-chains are easy to absorb and digest, and are converted quickly into energy. This means that the body has no opportunity to store the medium-chain as fat. Coconut is also a great source of dietary fiber with a whopping 5 grams per oz.!
- Dates: A laxative food with a high-fiber content, so it can help those suffering from constipation. They are digested quite easily and are great for when you need quick energy. Also, regular consumption of dates has been found to help the growth of friendly bacteria in the intestines.
- Peanuts: These legumes are full of protein with 7g per ounce. They also have a great monounsaturated fat content that helps your heart and brain. Peanut is a good source of Coenzyme Q10 which protects the heart during the period of lack of oxygen example high altitudes and clogged arteries. It also has a high antioxidant and high niacin content that helps in the recovery of cell damage and provides protection against Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive problem.
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