A friend of mine came to me, having newly started trying to improve her diet and remove all the many things she was allergic to, and told me she wanted to have a chocolate cake for her birthday party. But not just any old gluten free chocolate cake, which I already have a dozen recipes for. She wanted a gluten free, dairy free, egg free, sugar free, corn free chocolate cake. My thought was of course that those are essentially the things that go into cakes and I wasn't quite sure what would go in it, but I accepted the challenge.
The trickiest bit seemed to be making something without eggs, so I studied a biscuit recipe which was egg free. Margarine could easily be substituted for the butter in the recipe, and, I hoped, soy or rice milk could replace the cow's milk without too much trouble. Furthermore, I was told that my friend had a supply of sugar substitute which worked well. So, I figured: Take the biscuit recipe, make the substitutes, increase the amount of sweetener, add cocoa powder to make it chocolate and voila! An allergen free chocolate cake.
I decided to take this project one step further. I remembered that as a tradition, my friend had always had an icecream cake on her birthday. I did a little research and discovered it would be entirely possible to find a type of sorbet that was corn free, sugar free, and gluten free, and would function similarly, and, with the use of a spring form cakes, ice cream cakes are a cinch to make.
We ended up making a few adjustments. Firstly, semi sweet baking chocolate (which contains sugar) was purchased instead of cocoa powder. Secondly, the mixing process was a tad convoluted and we ended up adding more margerine than the original recipe asks for. And thirdly, the sorbet purchased did have some sugar and corn in it and one was manufactured in a facility with wheat (which, if you are like me, makes a difference).
Here's what we did:
- 10 tablespoons margarine, softened
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1 1/4 cup xanthan gum
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup xylatol (or sugar substitute of your choice)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup soy chocolate milk (just to be extra chocolaty)
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- 4 oz semi sweet chocolate
- 1 pint raspberry and chocolate sorbet, each
- extra chocolate for drizzling
-We mixed in the soy milk and vinegar until the mixture formed a batter.
-We melted the chocolate in a bowl with the remaining two tablespoons of margarine in the microwave (though this can be done slowly over stove top as well), and added it to the batter. We found that melting margarine with the chocolate helped it from solidifying once it hit the batter and forming tiny chunks, rather than the smooth and chocolaty texture we wanted.
-We lightly greased an 8 inch spring form pan, poured the batter into the pan, preheated the oven to 375 degrees F and baked it for approximately an hour, until it tested cleanly with a tooth pick.
-In order to make it an "icecream" cake, we allowed the cake to cool completely. Then we cut the cake in half so we had two slightly thinner cakes. Placing one of the thin cakes on the bottom of the same spring form pan it was baked in, we spooned already softened raspberry sorbet onto the cake. Once the sorbet layer was relatively even, we placed the second thin cake on top and put it back into the fridge to freeze.
-After a few hours, we placed softened chocolate sorbet on top of the entire cake and smoothed it. And, on my friend's suggestion, we drizzled the extra chocolate (melted again in the microwave) over the top of the cake, and froze the entire thing over night.
Wow!
Results: The cake was a hit! The guests loved every bite of it. It was chocolaty and delicious and the sour raspberry taste really made a nice contrast. The melted chocolate on top added an extra texture and was really decadent. And it tasted like cake!
While baking, this cake rose much more than I expected it to. It was very light and fluffy looking, though for a while, the only way to tell it was not yet done was that it jiggled alarmingly when disturbed.
After cooling and freezing, the texture of the cake was a little bit dense. This could be because it fell slightly during baking, or perhaps, because of the soy milk replacing the cow's milk, there was not enough chemical reactions producing bubbles. I was also informed that if you pour your cake batter into the pan to be baked while there are still lumps in it, it makes for a much more fluffy cake than if you pour it when it is smooth, as ours was.
Ideas and options for the future: This cake does not necessarily need to be made with ice cream, although it was quite tasty and a nice alternative to frosting. It could easily be baked in a normal 9 inch pan with, I think, good results.
Substituting cocoa powder in place of the semi sweet chocolate would be a very interesting experiment (not to mention making it truly sugar free). It might even help some of the density issues of the cake, as chocolate has a tendency to throw off liquid fat ratios. Or, you could simply substitute regular baking chocolate (without sweetener) for the semi sweet chocolate and add sugar-substitute until the batter was to your taste. If you do stick to melted chocolate, I recommend melting it with the margarine in the beginning of the recipe, rather than at the end as we did.
While baking, this cake rose much more than I expected it to. It was very light and fluffy looking, though for a while, the only way to tell it was not yet done was that it jiggled alarmingly when disturbed.
After cooling and freezing, the texture of the cake was a little bit dense. This could be because it fell slightly during baking, or perhaps, because of the soy milk replacing the cow's milk, there was not enough chemical reactions producing bubbles. I was also informed that if you pour your cake batter into the pan to be baked while there are still lumps in it, it makes for a much more fluffy cake than if you pour it when it is smooth, as ours was.
Ideas and options for the future: This cake does not necessarily need to be made with ice cream, although it was quite tasty and a nice alternative to frosting. It could easily be baked in a normal 9 inch pan with, I think, good results.
Substituting cocoa powder in place of the semi sweet chocolate would be a very interesting experiment (not to mention making it truly sugar free). It might even help some of the density issues of the cake, as chocolate has a tendency to throw off liquid fat ratios. Or, you could simply substitute regular baking chocolate (without sweetener) for the semi sweet chocolate and add sugar-substitute until the batter was to your taste. If you do stick to melted chocolate, I recommend melting it with the margarine in the beginning of the recipe, rather than at the end as we did.
Lastly, increasing the vinegar slightly might help produce more bubbles while baking. And plain soy milk could easily be used in the place of chocolate soy milk.
Note: The process for making an ice cream cake is the same in most cakes as it is here. If you have a cake recipe that is to be baked in a 9 by 13 inch pan, use a 10 inch spring form pan to produce a large ice cream cake, and make sure you have around 6 cups of softened ice cream to go in the middle. It helps cool the cake faster if you take the top of the spring form pan off once the cake is out of the oven.
(This recipe was of my own invention, adjusted and inspired from the rice based Biscuit recipe from Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free!")
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