Nigella's Gluten Free Dark and Sumptuous Vegan Chocolate Cake

This is a cake recipe I saw Nigella tweet but I lamented that it was not gluten free and to my surprise Nigella responded and suggested I try it gluten free so here we are.

I came to my friend Helen's house and with the help of her daughter Chloe as well we made this gluten free version. I am not a fan of coffee so we took that out but you can put it in. I also couldn't find edible rose petals so am using freeze dried strawberries which I found in one of my breakfast cereals!

Coconut butter is impossible to find so here is the recipe for coconut butter I used to make it. 

Nigella's Gluten Free Dark and Sumptuous Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

For the icing
60 millilitres cold water
75 grams coconut butter (recipe link above)
50 grams soft brown sugar
1½ tablespoons cocoa
150 grams dark chocolate (min. 40% cocoa solids), finely chopped

For the cake
225 grams plain flour
1½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
75 grams cocoa
300 grams soft brown sugar
375 millilitres hot water from a recently boiled kettle
75 grams coconut oil (90ml)
1½ teaspoons cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon freeze dried starwberries
1 tablespoon chopped pistachios

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 then grease and line a round 20cm/8in cake tin. Make sure to line well if you are using a springform tin as this is a very wet batter.

Start with the icing.

Place all the ingredients for the icing except the chopped chocolate into a small heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil. Make sure everything’s dissolved. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the stove top and quickly add the finely chopped chocolate making sure it all melts together. Leave for a minute, then stir until you have a dark glossy icing. Leave to cool. Make sure to give the icing a stir with a spatula every now and again.

Put the flour, bicarb, salt and cocoa in a mixing bowl and use to fork to give it a good mix. (As shown above with my excellent helper Chloe, 7)

Combine the sugar, water, coconut oil and vinegar until the coconut oil has melted, and stir into the dry ingredients. Once combined use an electric hand mixer on medium speed to get rid of any lumps. Next pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35 minutes but check at the 30-minute mark to see if it is already done.

When it's ready, the cake will be coming away from the edges of the tin and a cake tester will come out clean, apart from a few crumbs. This is a fudgy cake and you don't want to overdo it.

Once the cake is cooked, transfer the tin to a wire cooling rack and let the cake cool in its tin.

Give the icing a good stir with the spatula to check it's at the right consistency then turn the cake out of the tin and cover with icing, just like Helen is doing above.

It needs to be runny enough to cover the cake, but thick enough to stay (mostly) on top. If you are using a springform tin pour over the unmoulded cake, and use a spatula to ease the icing to the edges, if you need to.

Sprinkle with strawberries and chopped pistachios or anything else that your heart desires; otherwise, you can leave it as is, gleaming darkly.

Slice and enjoy.



Original recipe is here