Now that I think about it, it seems kind of obvious that a chocolate cake should have featured in my recipe collection before now. It is, after all, a baking staple.
But, simply, I’ve never managed to get around to it. Then late last year, I needed to make a cake in a hurry for a friend’s birthday. I just threw some ingredients together and hoped for the best, and actually the end result wasn’t too bad at all. I used prunes, which make this cake delightfully moist and they compliment the chocolate flavour beautifully.
With a bit of tweaking, I’ve managed to come up with a cake that is low in added sugar, and icing that is guilt-free. That’s right – it’s free of the bad stuff. Guilt-free icing also makes it ideal for the lunchbox, so go ahead, make your day (and your kids’ day) – serve it up for recess time.
As I was running low on cacao powder, I used cocoa powder instead. Either will do – you may need to adjust quantities to get the chocolatey taste just right.
Enjoy!
Ingredients
Cake
2 eggs
250 g pitted prunes
60 g brown sugar
50 g tapioca flour
65 g brown rice flour
70 g sorghum flour
20 g baking powder
20 g cocoa powder
1 tsp psyllium husk
1 tsp chia seeds
125 ml oil
125 ml milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
Icing
20 g cocoa powder
60 g rice malt syrup
50 g coconut butter, melted
1 tbs coconut sugar (or desiccated coconut), to decorate
Method
Preheat oven to 180° Celsius (conventional oven) or 160° Celsius (fan-forced oven). Grease and line a round 20 cm baking tin.
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs on medium speed for 5 minutes. In the meantime, put prunes in large microwave safe bowl. Cover with plastic film and microwave on high for 3 minutes. Drain and purée. Set aside to cool.
Add brown sugar to the eggs and beat on medium speed for a further 2 minutes.
Sift into the egg mixture the flours, baking powder, cocoa powder, psyllium husk and chia seeds. Add oil, milk, vanilla essence and prunes. Mix until well combined.
Pour into cake tin and bake for 40 minutes. Allow to cool in tin.
To make the icing, put cocoa, rice malt syrup and coconut butter in bowl. Stir to combine. Once cake is totally cooled, remove from tin. Spread icing evenly over cake. Sprinkle over coconut sugar.
Makes 8-10 slices.
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