2-Ingredient Flourless Chocolate Cake

This cake is dairy and gluten free!

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Great Cake for the Holidays 
As more and more guests show up with gluten and dairy allergies, this is a good dessert to have on hand. It is not vegan, however, as it needs eggs. At the end of this post, you can read about my efforts to veganize this recipe. 

First I will say that I did not invent this. My friend Margarite saw it on the internet and told me about it after I showed her a flourless chocolate cake I found in a magazine. That particular cake had almond flour, tons of sugar, butter, and was very high in calories. I knew that I could make it healthier and even try to make it vegan. But then she showed me this recipe that only had two ingredients - chocolate and eggs. I couldn't believe it! Although she had seen the recipe, she had never made it so I invited her over for the big experiment.

If you make it with vegan chocolate, it will be dairy and gluten free. My favorite chocolate is Endangered Species Natural Dark Chocolate - 72% cocoa. You can use any of your favorite chocolate chips or chocolate bars - you just need 9 ounces.

You can also spruce up the cake with berries and powdered sugar. 

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Two Ingredient Chocolate Cake
(Gluten Free, Dairy Free if using vegan chocolate)
makes 6 servings

Requirements
6-inch Spring Form Pan

Ingredients
4 large eggs, room temperature
9 ounces chocolate 
Powdered sugar (optional)
Raspberries to garnish (optional)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 6" spring form pan.

Place the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Place the bowl in the microwave and cook, in 30 second increments, until the chocolate melts. This can take 1 minute or slightly longer. You can also melt the chocolate in a double boiler, which is a bit messier.

Melted chocolate

Separate the eggs. Place the whites in a large, clean, glass bowl. Whip until soft peaks form. This can take a while so be patient. 

Beaten egg whites

Let the chocolate cool a bit and then, one by one, whip each yolk into the chocolate until well combined.

Gently fold 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the chocolate/egg yolk mixture. Then repeat with the next 1/3 of the egg whites. And finally, with the last 1/3 of the egg whites.

Pour the batter into the greased 6-inch spring form pan and bake for 30 minutes.

Cool on a cake rack for 15 minutes or so. Then, release.

Release and serve

You can dress this up with powdered sugar, berries, or a scoop of non-dairy ice cream!

Nutrition:
Per serving: 258 calories, 21 g total fat, 12 g saturated fat, 141 mg cholesterol, 7 g protein, 21 g carbohydrates, 12 g sugar, 5 g dietary fiber, and 47 mg sodium.

Sometimes you just need an egg!
For my vegan followers, I tried really hard to make this vegan. I whipped up aquafaba (garbanzo bean juice) into beautiful peeks of "egg" white. I replaced the yolks with flax eggs and the result was a complete failure! I won't give up trying, but if you want a good laugh, here's how my vegan experiment turned out. It was basically a melted chocolate bar. We scraped it off and ate it anyway :-)

Sometimes you just need an egg!

Mango Cake - The Perfect Vegan And Gluten Free Easter Dessert

This gluten and dairy free dessert is the
perfect ending to your Easter Brunch.

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My Favorite Mango
Our favorite little mangoes are in season. They come with many names like Manilla, Ataulfo, Champagne, and Honey, with slight variations and places of origin. But they are all small (around 9 to 11 ounces) and as sweet as sugar.

Doug and I have been under the weather so to cheer ourselves up, and with the excuse of having to create an Easter dessert for the blog, we created a cake on Sunday with our very favorite fruit.

These are smaller, less stringy, and much sweeter than the large, more commonly found mangoes.

Easter Sunday is a great time to have family and friends over for brunch and this dessert is a good choice. It's vegan and gluten free so besides delighting everyone's taste buds, it will accommodate most everyones dietary issues. (See "Variation" below for a whole wheat version of the recipe.)

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Mango Cake
Vegan, Gluten and Dairy Free
[makes 12 servings]

Requirements
Electric Hand Mixer
9" round cake pan
Waxed paper, cut in a 9" circle

Ingredients
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing pan 
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds 
6 tablespoons warm filtered water 
1 (10-ounce or more) Champagne mango
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill all purpose baking flour 
1½ teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder 
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut plus some for sprinkling
½ cup organic cane sugar 
½ cup unsweetened applesauce 
1 teaspoon coconut extract 
1 mashed ripe banana
Powdered sugar for dusting

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350°F; grease a 9" round cake pan and insert a 9" circle of wax paper on the bottom of the pan.

In a small cup, make flax eggs by combining the ground flax seeds with the water. Beat well and set aside. After a few minutes, beat again until gooey. Set aside. 

Peel the mango with a potato peeler. Cut the mango off the seed and dice in small pieces. Some will be used in the cake and some will be used for the topping. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt and the shredded coconut. 

In a large bowl, combine the oil, sugar, applesauce, and coconut extract; beat with an electric hand mixer until creamy. Add the mashed banana and flax eggs and beat again until well combined.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and beat with the electric mixer until well combined. The mixture will be quite stiff.

Fold in 1/2 cup of the diced mango and set the rest of it aside. 

Spread evenly into the prepared cake pan.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center of the cake, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the cake pan for 30 minutes. Cut around the edges of the cake pan and flip the cake out onto a plate. Peel off the wax paper.

I like the looks of the browned top of the cake better than the bottom so flip over again onto the final serving plate. Let the cake cool completely before you proceed.

Pile the rest of the diced mango onto the center of the cake. Sprinkle a bit of shredded coconut over the mango and dust the entire cake with powdered sugar. 

Slice, making sure each piece has some diced mango over it, and serve.

Nutrition
Per serving: 181 calories, 7 g total fat, 2 g saturated fat, 310 mg omega-3 and 538 mg omega-6 fatty acids*, 0 mg cholesterol, 3 g protein, 30 g carbohydrates, 3.5 g dietary fiber, and 190 mg sodium. 

* Nutritional information for omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids excludes any contribution from Bob’s Redmill all purpose baking flour and xanthan gum since that information was not available from the manufacturer.

Variation
For a whole wheat cake, replace the gluten-free flour with King Arthur’s white whole-wheat flour, omit the xanthan gum, and increase the applesauce to 2/3 cup.

For more menu and recipe ideas, download my eBook, Health Begins in the Kitchen.

Make Your Holiday Baking Healthier - How To Convert Butter To Olive Oil In Recipes

Olive oil is a healthy substitute for butter in
holiday baking - Here's why!

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Check out my eBook, Health Begins in the Kitchen.

Holiday Baking
Before you start baking holiday goodies for your family, friends, and neighbors, consider substituting some or all of that butter with extra virgin olive oil. Here's why!

First of all, it takes less olive oil than butter.  Here's how it converts:

Butter              Oil
1 tsp       =      3/4 tsp
1 TB               2 1/4 tsp
2 TB               1 1/2 TB
1/4 C              3 TB
1/3 C             1/4 C
1/2 C              1/4 C + 2 TB
2/3 C              1/2 C
3/4 C              1/2 C + 1 TB
1 C                 3/4 C

For example, if your recipe calls for 1/2 cup of butter , you would only need 6 tablespoons of olive oil. Nutritionally, this means:
* you would save 100 calories, 
* the recipe would have 47 fewer grams of saturated fat,
* you would save 244 mg of cholesterol,
* the baked item with olive oil would have 260 mg more beneficial omega-3 and 4,811 mg more omega-6 fatty acids.

In addition, olive oil contains anti-inflammatory polyphenols which lower the body's overall inflammation.  So give it a try!

Can't Give it Up?
If you absolutely cannot give up that buttery flavor, try using some ghee. Ghee is traditionally used in Indian food and is made by cooking butter until all the moisture is removed and the milk solids are caramelized and filtered out. Ghee has many advantages over butter.

Although it's not vegan, people like myself who cannot eat dairy, can tolerate ghee because  it does not have lactose or the milk protein, casein. It also doesn't spoil and can last for several months without refrigeration, so it's nice and soft when you need it. 

Always buy organic ghee made from
grass-fed and pasture-raised cows

But despite the numerous health claims you may read about ghee, it is still a saturated fat so if you do eat it, do it sparingly. 

It's amazing how very little butter or ghee it takes to bring a buttery taste to your recipe. So if you don't want to replace all of your butter with olive oil, convert most of it and add just a little ghee.

Happy Baking!