It’s perfect for the holidays too.
My best friend offered to bake me a cake for my birthday. But I’m picky about ingredients and especially about low-sugar and low-fat (and still delicious) baking. I’m also looser about straying from recipes—we have a ton in common, but when it comes to recipes she wants to follow them to the letter and I want to barely use them as a guide to create something even better.
So we agreed that I would supervise and orchestrate, and she would be my sous chef. 🙂 And this is what I (we) came up with.
It’s SUPER simple; utterly delicious; wonderful substantial, firm yet moist texture; delicious plain but eminently frostable; and makes a great breakfast cake or snack as well as dessert. I’d be proud to bring it to any holiday party!
I used (all ingredients organic where applicable):
- 1 cup buckwheat flour (I think ANY flour you like will do; I hang loose with flours!)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/3 cup raw cacao powder
- 1/4 cup coconut sugar
- .5 Tbsp avocado oil
- 1/4 cup aquafaba (canned chickpea liquid) – replaces egg or flax-egg
- 1 ounce dried tart unsweetened cherries
- 2 T Pascha 100% dark choclate chips
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp powdered ginger
- 2 drops Young Living cardamom oil (powder would work too—I was out! I’m a cardamom freak)
325˚ oven, 20-25 minutes or until toothpick in center comes out clean. That’s it!
Important Note—you will probably want to DOUBLE this recipe for a full-size cake. I always make a small batter the first time, so as not to waste good ingredients in case it comes out a mess—which is rare, and this one wasn’t. I used a small (8″) cast-iron pan to make this first cake. That made 8 pretty decent-sized slices, and they were reasonably thick, but if you wanted a deeper (say, bundt) sized cake…bump it up!
I think the field for experimentation with this base cake is wide open: fresh or frozen cherries instead of dried (or cranberries, or figs), walnuts or hazelnuts, a little applesauce or pumpkin for more moistness, egg or flax egg for more “spring.” You could obviously use more and sweeter chocolate chips (that was all i had around, or i’d have used 85% or 72%), and any kind of milk.
You could use more oil, I guess, if that appeals to you (not to me, and I don’t feel I need it; I get plenty of fat from chocolate and but butter. 🙂 I do use avocado or walnut oil when I smidge a little oil, for the Omega-3s and flavor…)
If it’s not sweet enough for you, you could use more sugar (or use a liquid sugar like maple syrup)—but I wouldn’t recommend it. Finding a cake this tasty that’s so low in sugar is pretty awesome.
It’s just SO good this simple, just as it is, and an amazing nutrition profile for 1/8th of a smallish-medium cake (really pretty nice slices): 155 calories, 7.4 g sugar, 2.6 g. fat, 30 grams carb, 2 g protein
We topped with fresh raspberries and thawed frozen cherries and sipped Republic of Tea Peppermint Chocolate tea and Cranberry Hibiscus Spice tea.
ENJOY!
