chocolate – But What Can You Eat?

You ever need a dessert that doesn’t take a lot of time and comes out looking presentable for company? I don’t often have that need, but I’m eating Christmas at someone else’s home this year, and one of the ways I like to contribute (and ensure that there’s a dessert I can eat!) is to volunteer myself to bring a cake, or some cookies, or a couple of sides, a chicken, and the left hand side of the menu.

Look, I get nervous when I eat out, okay? Two weeks ago, I had half a sandwich at Panera and wound up with a tight throat, three days’ worth of hives, and a depleted Benadryl stash. This is through no fault of the company of course! I had told the servers I have food allergies. This is just the risk I run when I eat outside my own kitchen, even when I’m eating foods I haven’t reacted poorly to before.

So to make myself feel better, and to help me gear up for the holiday cooking marathon, I decided to make a cake. A chocolate cake to be precise, using gluten free flours, and more cocoa powder than is probably good for me. It also let me test out an idea I had for a cake without all the fake butter, which I didn’t have in the fridge, and nut milk…which I had forgotten the night before.

But what makes a cake? The reason we use butter and milk is because we need liquid and fat to create something more unctuous than sugar and flour can provide; it’s the difference between cake and enriched bread. So I vaguely remembered a friend passing me a cake recipe without eggs, butter, or milk that only needed coconut cream (I have looked and looked, but I cannot find the recipe! So thank you, anonymous cake maker, and if I ever find that link again I will be including it here). I needed to make one big enough to share, but not overwhelming and—since I had the idea that all that coconut would make it way to rich, be able to stand on its own without frosting.

Most cakes, especially gluten-free and plant-based cakes, are just as delicious as fully dairy, egg, and sugar cakes are. Unfortunately, none of those are guaranteed to be allergy-friendly, much less allergy-free! Like many people, I can’t have baking powder or eggs, vanilla extract, or xanthan gum. But I can have coconut, and that’s all the delightfully fatty goodness I need to make a cake.

The result is a chocolatey delight, rich enough to satisfy anyone’s dessert cravings. It’s quite dense and rich because of the coconut cream, but I didn’t taste any coconut when I tried a piece. Or the morning after, when I tested it again. Or the day after that. Look, I ate a lot of it, and had no complaints. I made three 5″ cakes, and popped one in the freezer (that’s what I do with practically everything) and it defrosted well. To make it fancy, I shook some powdered sugar over the top, but I think it holds up well on its own. Maybe next time I’ll add an edible flower or two?

You’ll Need (serves 6-10):

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 13oz. can coconut cream, shaken well and at room temperature

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. cold water

4 flax eggs

1 cup cocoa powder

1/3 brown rice powder

1/3 millet flour

1/3 sorghum flour

1/2 cup arrowroot flour

Preheat your over to 375F.

Make your flax eggs fifteen minutes before starting your cake, and then mix all the ingredients except the flours and baking soda together. In a different bowl, stir the flours and the baking soda together, and then slowly add it into the wet mixture. Stir the cake together until there are no lumps and make sure you’re incorporating some air (try counting to 360 while stirring, if you’re doing it by hand).

Grease two 8”-9” pans, or three 5’ pans (like I did). Pour the cake batter up to a little over the halfway mark in each pan, and let them rest for about twenty to thirty minutes.

Decrease the temperature in the oven to 350F, and put your cake pans in! Cook for about 30-40 minutes, or until a fork stuck in the middle of the cakes comes out cleanly.

Cool the cake in the pan for ten minutes, before turning the pan upside down on a cooling rack and letting it complete cool.

Additional Reminders:

Don’t be alarmed if your coconut cream had tiny white chucks floating in it! Those are okay. If you open the can and the coconut cream is too hard to mix, spoon it into a microwave safe bowl and warm it up in the microwave for fifteen seconds.
If you’re making this cake with regular AP flour, then you don’t need to let the batter rest, and you can take out the eggs entirely. The flax eggs in the gluten free recipe are to provide structure for the GF flours.
If you’re in a rush, turn this into cupcakes! They’ll cook faster, and they’re more portable. After about twenty minutes, stick a fork in the center cupcake to test the doneness.

vegan, plant-based gluten free chocolate chip cookies

I think in almost every child’s life there exists The Cookie. The One Cookie to Rule Them All.

Maybe it wasn’t baked by their parents or caregivers (I have very fond memories of eating Oreos at my grandparents. Oreos! The LUXURY!). Maybe, looking back, it was something so simple and pleasant that you forget it entirely until the sudden need for a cookie consumes you, and nothing less than the closest approximation to said Cookie will do.

So it is, dear readers, in my home, where Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts reigns supreme. Other authors may entice, but La Heatter remains steadfast, consulted for every serious dessert undertaking and never far from reach on the cookbook shelf. And the cookie recipe most used in our house? Cowboy Cookies on page 178. Falls right open to the page without any need to consult the index.

They’re gorgeous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with optional walnuts or pecans and my mother makes the best ones. I’m not prevaricating, she’s the best baker in the family and it’s by a very wide margin. If we ate cookies (not often, butter was expensive!) these were the ones we ate. Of course, now I’m actually allergic to a ton of the ingredients but that’s not the memory I prefer to hold on to!

What I like to do, at least cookie-wise, is fix what’s not working for me, and away with all the rest! So when I was suddenly seized late at night with an urge to sink my teeth into something chocolatey and delicious, I followed ancient tradition and pulled out the good ol’ Heatter, page 178.

Baking powder, vanilla extract, and butter, oh my! Not things I can have, but fortunately I could omit the first two and substitute the third. The flour I abandoned, because Mom is trying to cut down on gluten for health reasons, and I sure can’t eat thirty-six cookies all by myself. Since oats make me itch, I decided to up the flour in order to get the right consistency.

I am a huge novice when it comes to gluten-free baking, so I’m always trying to figure out how to bake things correctly. From the little bit of America’s Test Kitchen’s website available to read without paying for a subscription, they stress that letting gluten-free food rest and re-hydrate will make your food bake better. (Baker’s note: Mom informs me that resting cookie dough is actually pretty common. Guess who’d go farther on GBBO?) Always let your gluten-free bakes rest at least 30 minutes, including cookies and other things that don’t normally need to rest.

Mine assuredly did, because at that point, I realized that it was 9:30 at night and I needed to go to bed.

So, I slung the bowl into the fridge (covered with plastic wrap) and let it alone until the next morning. It was perfectly fine! Nothing separated or anything.

Heatter’s recipe uses regular AP Flour, so I tried a mix of different flours on my own. Sweet white sorghum to make up for the oats, coconut and almond flours for sweetness, millet for protein, and arrowroot for cohesion. It also only has instructions re: baking times for regular AP flour, so I experimented with the cooking time in the oven. I have learned to my cost (and the suspicion of my smoke alarm) that GF food just takes longer to cook, so I tried low and slow and high and fast, and you know what? Perfectly cooked at 350F. Just leave them in for 40 minutes and try not to stare through the oven door like you’re in the Bake-Off. I also let them cool on the cookie sheet for ten minutes before transferring them to the cooling rack.

For everything else, I followed the recipe instructions to the letter, baking them on the top rack because there’s only one cookie sheet, and remembering to set my timer because I’m a flake. So, if you feel like a chewy chocolate chip cookie with slightly crisp edges and nicely pliant density, then follow the recipe below!

Gluten-Free Vegan Cowboy Cookies (adapted from Maida Heatter)

Makes 36 cookies

1/2 cup super-fine almond flour

1/2 + 1/3 cup coconut flour

1/3 cup millet flour

1/3 cup arrowroot flour

1/3 cup sweet white sorghum flour

1 Tbsp. tapioca flour

1 Flax Egg

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar (I don’t eat brown sugar, and instead sub in more white sugar)

1 stick (1/4 lb.) Miyoko’s butter, or 6 Tbsp. oil

1/2 cup chocolate chips

~1/2 cup broken walnuts or pecans (optional)

~1 cup water or cashew milk

It’s always good to cream the butter and sugar together, but if the butter’s too hard, stick it in the microwave for thirty seconds and then stir in the sugars in a separate bowl. Add all the flours, sugars, and butter into the flax seed bowl and stir them together before you add the chocolate and nuts. Slowly add the water into the bowl as you mix until it looks like cookie dough. You might not need the whole cup of water; it should be thick and scoopable, not like a pancake batter.

Cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for at least thirty minutes. When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375F.

I use a small ice cream scoop to put the cookies on the tray, and then just press them flat with my fingers. You should be able to fit at least nine on the cookie sheet, they don’t really spread much.

Once the cookies are in the oven, decrease the heat to 350F, and bake them for 40 minutes. Once baked, cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes, and then transfer to the cooling rack. Scoop and repeat!

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Tag: chocolate

Coconut Cream Chocolate Cake

Oh My Maida! Gluten-Free Vegan Cowboy Cookies