Quick & Easy Recipe: GF, SF Cocoa Cake with Forest Fruit Topping

This is a gluten-free, sugar-free cake recipe that is pared down to the minimum ingredients without sacrificing the taste. It tastes satisfying, and you can’t even tell it wasn’t made with real sugar. And then the forest fruit topping is oh so healthy! But don’t be mistaken, so is the chickpea flour and cocoa (and eggs and bananas) in the batter. Only the butter is so-so 🙂

And yes, all you need is 5 big ingredients (and the forest fruit), 2 sweeteners, and a few minor but essential foodstuffs. Here they are, for a 25 cm/10” pan:

100 g/3.5 oz butter
2 medium eggs
2 ripe bananas
80 drops stevia
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
150 g/5.3 oz chickpea flour (or other GF flour)
4 tbsp cocoa
1 baking powder packet (most brands are gluten-free, but do check!)
2 pinches salt
optional: real chocolate chips if you are okay with some sugar

And then for the topping:

75 g/2.6 oz frozen forest fruit
30 ml/1 fl oz water
1.5 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 4 tbsp water

It only takes 10 minutes to make and then 35 minutes to bake in the oven. Here’s the quickest way to make this recipe:

First, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F, and then melt the butter at bain-marie. Here’s a video on how to use a bain-marie (make sure the water doesn’t reach the top bowl).

Leave the butter to cool. Mash the bananas with a fork.

Whisk the eggs, butter, bananas, sweeteners, and vanilla extract with the mixer on low. Slowly stir in the dry ingredients, one spoon at a time. This cake is much better with real chocolate chips, so if you are okay with a little sugar, add some at the end.

Pour the batter with the help of a dough scraper (or a spoon) into a round, medium-sized nonstick baking pan. Mine has a diameter of 25 cm/10”. Note that with a nonstick pan, you don’t need to add a parchment paper. Bake for 35 mins at 180°C/350°F. Take the cake layer out of the oven, give it a couple of minutes to cool off a little, and then turn it upside down onto a large plate—but before you do so, make sure you remove the edges of the cake from the sides of the pan with a plastic scraper or a silicone spatula. It’s important to use a silicone tool so as not to scratch the pan’s coating.

Now it’s time to make the topping. Heat the forest frozen fruit gently with 30 ml/1 fl oz water, and then, when it starts to simmer, lower the heat a little and add the slurry (cornstarch dissolved in a few tablespoons of water). Stir for about a minute, or a minute and a half, but not longer, as you then run the risk of cornstarch breaking down and the topping mix becoming thin again. So after a minute, if it’s thick enough, remove it from the heat and add it to the top of your cake with a plastic scraper or a spoon.

That’s it! You can now slice the cake and eat some (I recommend whipped cream, if you can handle a little sugar), or you can wait an hour for it to cool off and then tuck into it.

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Note that the combination of stevia and bananas as natural sweeteners works wonders. You can’t tell that I’ve used sugar substitutes—it’s that good! And again, feel free to use chocolate chips if you’re not diabetic. I would have but I decided to make this cake on the spur of the moment and didn’t have any in the pantry.

Also, try to use chickpea flour if you can, as it’s high in fiber and super rich in important vitamins and minerals as well as polyphenols (a class of antioxidants)—and you don’t need a 1:1 flour mix (1:1 substitute for regular wheat flour) for this recipe, as those contain gluten-free flour as well as starches and thickeners. These blends have their uses in other pastries, but not in this one. In general, especially if you’re diabetic, try to stay away from extra starches, as the body breaks them down into glucose. I used some in the topping, but there’s no reason why you should ingest starches from the gluten-free blends as well.

Bob’s Red Mill Chickpea Flour (Gluten-Free, Kosher, Non-GMO Certified) (affiliate link)

And in case you don’t have stevia handy, here’s a link:

Pyure Organic Stevia Sweetener Blend, 2:1 Sugar Substitute, Granular All-Purpose,
1 Pound (16 Ounce) (affiliate link)

Enjoy!

To a happier, healthier life,

Mira

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