Multi-Exclusion chocolate cake
11 July 2022 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentric posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gluten_freeThe ancestral recipe for this is the King Arthur Flour Co's recipe, with the "hot coffee + cocoa" trick borrowed from "Jan's Mud Cake" in the Penninsula Community Pre-School Cookbook 1994 (I think 1994. Maybe 1995?). I've posted it before, but have improved on it since. I just made a version for the Tortenessen festival in Bern, which I managed to figure out to be vegan, gf, soy-free, lentil-free, free of unspecified lethins, and nut-free. And it still tasted good!
This recipe is: Egg and dairy free, vegan; nut, soy and lentil free (but check your flour mixes to be sure).
This recipe works well with: gluten-free flour mixes. I've used the Migros (ch) home brand, and Dove's Farm, both equally well. I don't think it would work so well on all-buckwheat, or other heavy non-nut flours; you'd want to mix in some sorghum, tapioca, rice, etc, as well as guar or xantham if you were doing it yourself.
This recipe requires: very little equipment, but it will help if you have two mixing bowls or a bowl and a large-ish liquid measure.
US measures.
1 1/2 cups GF flour mix
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (works fine if you use all white, but the mollasses helps both with richness of flavouring and holding the outside together a bit)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup hot coffee (I use a moka pot; espresso + water, or instant + water also valid)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon white vinegar (if you forget this, the result tastes okay but has even LESS rise. Aske me how I know)
80ml vegetable oil
2/3 cup cold water
Mix together in a bowl: flour, sugars, baking powder.
Mix together in a jug, or small bowl: oil, water, vinegar, vanilla. Pour into the wet mix and stir briefly.
Mix together: hot coffee and cocoa powder. If you can mix them IN the container you mixed the other liquids in, they'll pick up the remaining oil dregs. Mix until the cocoa is mostly combined. Pour into the cake mix and stir well. If it approaches cookie texture, add more water.
Pour into a brownie tin. If you're using regular flour you'll need a taller cake tin, but brownie tins work best for the GF option. (Loaf tins: cake doesn't have enough integrity to sustain the rise; large round tins are okay, but the lack of rise looks like an error rather than a fact of life, and cutting into wedges tend to result in the pointy end falling off when you try to serve it.)
Bake 25-30 min at 180 degrees C.
When cool, ice.
2-3 tbsp vegetable oil.
2-3 tbsp cocoa powder
Icing sugar. Probably about half a cup.
Some boiling water.
Mix oil and cocoa powder. Add about 1/2 a cup of icing sugar, to start. Add about 25ml of boiling water and mix vigorously with a knife. This should form a paste. If it is too gluggy add more water. If it is too thin, add more icing sugar. Continue in this vein until you have icing.
The oil version will NOT spread as well as a butter or margarine version, but will be free of Unspecified Lecthins. I dolloped it onto the cake and then dipped a knife in hot water to spread; I simply didn't try to spread over the edges of the cake. The result, in the fourth image here, was certainly "informal", but tasty.
I had been able to get hold of free-from-everything heart sprinkles, so that livened up the presentation a little.
This will never be the prettiest or the most impressive cake available for any given dietary exclusion, but it tastes good, and it's so simple that it does cover a whole slew of exclusions in one go. If you were allergic to maize starch, say, as well as gluten, a bit of experimenting with diy flour mixes would probably work. If it fails to rise, you end up closer to a soft chocolate slice, but it still tastes okay.
Meanwhile, the Tortenessen was fun. I will post about my adventures signing up for "check and restock the toilets" at anarchist off-grid camp on a NOT food related post in my own journal. But the cake. I've never seen so many gluten-free cakes in one place. Amazing.
This recipe is: Egg and dairy free, vegan; nut, soy and lentil free (but check your flour mixes to be sure).
This recipe works well with: gluten-free flour mixes. I've used the Migros (ch) home brand, and Dove's Farm, both equally well. I don't think it would work so well on all-buckwheat, or other heavy non-nut flours; you'd want to mix in some sorghum, tapioca, rice, etc, as well as guar or xantham if you were doing it yourself.
This recipe requires: very little equipment, but it will help if you have two mixing bowls or a bowl and a large-ish liquid measure.
US measures.
1 1/2 cups GF flour mix
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (works fine if you use all white, but the mollasses helps both with richness of flavouring and holding the outside together a bit)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup hot coffee (I use a moka pot; espresso + water, or instant + water also valid)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon white vinegar (if you forget this, the result tastes okay but has even LESS rise. Aske me how I know)
80ml vegetable oil
2/3 cup cold water
Mix together in a bowl: flour, sugars, baking powder.
Mix together in a jug, or small bowl: oil, water, vinegar, vanilla. Pour into the wet mix and stir briefly.
Mix together: hot coffee and cocoa powder. If you can mix them IN the container you mixed the other liquids in, they'll pick up the remaining oil dregs. Mix until the cocoa is mostly combined. Pour into the cake mix and stir well. If it approaches cookie texture, add more water.
Pour into a brownie tin. If you're using regular flour you'll need a taller cake tin, but brownie tins work best for the GF option. (Loaf tins: cake doesn't have enough integrity to sustain the rise; large round tins are okay, but the lack of rise looks like an error rather than a fact of life, and cutting into wedges tend to result in the pointy end falling off when you try to serve it.)
Bake 25-30 min at 180 degrees C.
When cool, ice.
2-3 tbsp vegetable oil.
2-3 tbsp cocoa powder
Icing sugar. Probably about half a cup.
Some boiling water.
Mix oil and cocoa powder. Add about 1/2 a cup of icing sugar, to start. Add about 25ml of boiling water and mix vigorously with a knife. This should form a paste. If it is too gluggy add more water. If it is too thin, add more icing sugar. Continue in this vein until you have icing.
The oil version will NOT spread as well as a butter or margarine version, but will be free of Unspecified Lecthins. I dolloped it onto the cake and then dipped a knife in hot water to spread; I simply didn't try to spread over the edges of the cake. The result, in the fourth image here, was certainly "informal", but tasty.
I had been able to get hold of free-from-everything heart sprinkles, so that livened up the presentation a little.
This will never be the prettiest or the most impressive cake available for any given dietary exclusion, but it tastes good, and it's so simple that it does cover a whole slew of exclusions in one go. If you were allergic to maize starch, say, as well as gluten, a bit of experimenting with diy flour mixes would probably work. If it fails to rise, you end up closer to a soft chocolate slice, but it still tastes okay.
Meanwhile, the Tortenessen was fun. I will post about my adventures signing up for "check and restock the toilets" at anarchist off-grid camp on a NOT food related post in my own journal. But the cake. I've never seen so many gluten-free cakes in one place. Amazing.