Making flourless chocolate cake gluten-free is pretty easy, since naturally it’s already gluten-free. But veganizing it takes a bit more work. The usual recipe takes chocolate, eggs, sugar and butter and turns it into a dense, moist, very chocolatey cake. And the eggs in the recipe are what gives it its structure, so you can’t just go and replace them with the usual flax seed, mashed bananas, or ‘vegan egg replacer mix’ that most vegans use in place of eggs.

So, how does this work, then?

Pumpkin! And also, umm, a little flour. But it’s buckwheat flour, and as the person who wrote this recipe mentions, buckwheat isn’t really flour, it’s a groat! So it doesn’t count, right?

The recipe is extremely easy to make: just put everything in a blender and blend blend blend! Then pour into a greased Springform pan and bake for about an hour at 350C.

This recipe is from Gluten-Free Goddess, and I didn’t modify it at all, so I’ll simply link to her blog. I will mention that you don’t need a Vitamix for this recipe, any blender will do, as long as it is decently high powered and has about a 2L capacity (or more).

I served mine with a simple caramel sauce: Take 2 tablespoons of soy milk and combine them with 1 tablespoon arrowroot flour and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Set aside. Then take 1/4 cup of vegan butter (like Earth Balance) and melt in a small pot. Stir in 1 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup soy milk and let come to a boil. Let it boil for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Then, take the pan off the heat and stir in the arrowroot mixture – it should thicken pretty quickly. Serve over your cake or over ice cream or anything else that could use a little caramel.

This is my final post on the February Vegan Challenge. I have to say, it wasn’t bad at all having zero animal products for the month of February. It was a bit tricky at times, as eating out when you’re vegan can be a challenge, but cooking at home was completely fine. I even finally got to try soy-based ’sour cream’ and I liked it! Like most vegan ‘replacement foods’ (butter, sour cream, etc) it has to be a sometimes food because of the high amounts of palm oil, but it was a tasty addition to some vegan tacos we had a few weeks ago.

If you’ve ever thought of going vegan for a while, I encourage you to do so!

Back in February, I made a giant vegan chocolate cupcake with normal-sized cupcakes to go with it for the staff as their post-release treat. Why vegan? Well, a few of the staff can’t have milk, so I already had to do dairy-free, and figured I’d might as well go the whole way and do it fully vegan. I used my standard chocolate cupcake recipe, which is already vegan, and used the yummy buttercream icing recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which substitutes in margarine for the usual butter. They were a hit! So when I was asked to do their cake again, I knew I’d have to come up with something really tasty, lest they think my vegan baking skills are slacking.

A quick flip through Vegan Cupcakes led me to the pretty simple idea of adding oreo cookies to chocolate cake batter and icing to make crazy chocolate-y goodness. Yum! Fortunately, oreo cookies are already vegan, so I didn’t have to buy anything super special there. I just grabbed a thing of Earth Balance for the icing and I was ready to go. And the results?

Sorry for the poor photo quality… I was pretty tired after baking almost 3 dozen of these babies. But I’m sure you can still tell how tasty they were. Hard to go wrong with chocolate, vanilla and oreos!

The recipe has been reprinted on Chow, so go there if you’d like to make these yourself. Which you should. But just be careful not to eat too many, lest you get a sugar coma.

For February, Daring Bakers hosts were Wendy at wmpesblog and Dharm at Dad – Baker and Chef. In keeping with the theme of Valentine’s day, this month’s challenge was to make a Chocolate Valentino, and pair it with some sort of ice cream of our choosing.

What’s a valentino, you might ask? Well, it’s a lovely flourless chocolate cake. The recipe consists of eggs, chocolate and butter, and that’s it. No flour, no sugar, no other flavouring. The end result is a dense, moist cake that tastes exactly like the chocolate you make it with, so it is important to choose one that you like. In my case, I chose Green & Black’s baking chocolate, which is organic and has 72% cocoa content. I wanted dark chocolate but nothing too bitter, so I figured that bar might do the trick.

The recipe itself is pretty easy to follow: melt your chocolate and butter together, separate the eggs, whip the whites, beat the yolks, then combine and bake in a buttered pan. In my case, I made only 1/3 of the recipe, which yielded 2 nice ramekin-sized servings.

As for my ice cream, I made a vegan coffee-flavoured version with soymilk. As I’ve mentioned before, Rich can’t eat regular ice cream, so making milk-free versions is best. The end result tasted like a soy latte. Next time I think I’d put more coffee into the batter, to give it a stronger flavour.

As always, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for more versions of this month’s challenge! The flourless chocolate cake recipe and my soy latte ice cream recipe are both posted below.

Chocolate Valentino – From Sweet Treats by Chef Wan

These amounts make the full recipe (with a 7″ or 8″ square, round, or heart-shaped pan).  As mentioned, I found making 1/3 of the recipe yielded 2 ramekins worth.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Soy Latte ‘Ice Cream’ – Original recipe from Vegan Ice Cream Paradise, modified by me.

2 cups soy creamer (or any non-dairy milk)
1½ cups soy milk (or any non-dairy milk)
½ cup strong brewed coffee
¾ cup sugar
2 Tablespoons arrowroot
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Mix the soy creamer, soy milk, coffee and sugar together in a saucepan. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools).

Stir in vanilla extract.

Put mixture into your refrigerator to cool, then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

The original recipe is here, and my slight modifications are listed below.

Banana Brownies

Finding a good recipe could have been a challenge. One of my friends is allergic to eggs, and I wanted to make sure he could have a treat too! I do have some vegan egg replacer, and could have easily used that, but then I happened upon a fantastic chocolate cake recipe that doesn’t require eggs. Perfect! Just add some easy buttercream icing (also egg free) and you’re good to go.

Cupcakes:
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. baking cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. water
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Add water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Mix well. Fill paper-lined muffin cups 3/4 full with batter. Bake at 350ºF for 25-30 minutes. Cool 10 minutes and remove from pan. Makes 12.

Icing:
6 tablespoons butter, softened
3 tablespoons milk or soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
food coloring (optional)

In a bowl, beat together the butter, milk and vanilla until smooth (about 3 minutes). Add in confectioners sugar; beat very well until smooth, adding more if necessary to achieve desired consistency. Add in food coloring (if desired) and mix well.

I figured chocolate mousse would be at least slightly difficult to make. In reality it was actually pretty easy! You start with good quality chocolate (I opted for Poulain Noir, which has 76% cocoa) and melt it in a double boiler. Then you whip your egg whites to soft peaks, add in sugar, and then continue whipping to meringue consistency (stiff peaks). After that, take your egg yolks and whisk in your alcohol (I used Grand Marnier, the recipe recommended Cointreau), then add in the chocolate, and finally fold everything into the egg whites. It was actually that last step that was the most difficult; it was hard to get the chocolate folded in without it clumping. But I discovered it just takes a little patience and lots of gentle stirring!

A little whipped cream and shaved chocolate and this was ready for serving. If it were summer and fresh seasonal berries were available, I would have added those on top.

Recipe from the foodtv.ca blog.

Chocolate Mousse – makes 8 small or 4 larger servings

5 ounces dark chocolate
4 x egg whites
2 Tbsps sugar
2 x egg yolks
1 tsp orange zest
1 tbsp Cointreau

1. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler until smooth. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks, sprinkle the sugar, and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
2. Beat the yolks with the orange zest and Cointreau (or liqueur of your choice, I like Grand Marnier) in a bowl.
3. Whisk the chocolate into the yolks. Then, take a spoonful of the whites and fold it into the chocolate mixture. Pour that into the remaining whites and fold gently to combine evenly. Pour the mousse into a serving bowl. Wrap well in plastic and refrigerate for at least a few hours. Serve topped with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and orange zest if you desire.

This month’s cooking club recipe is for Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Gingerbread Cake. Now, I love gingerbread and I love chocolate, so of course I was going to love this recipe, right?

The smell coming from the oven as the gingerbread baked was so heavenly. It made the whole house smell so nice. As some of you know, my husband and I are currently in the middle of moving to Toronto, and our apartment is being shown from time-to-time to prospective new tenants. If only they had shown the apartment while I was baking, it would have rented for sure.

Now, I’m going to be honest here. I was lazy. I didn’t pick up any parchment paper when I was at the store because I figured I could get by without it. If I spray the pan very well, surely the cake won’t stick, right?

Oh how wrong I was. As you can see from the photographic evidence, the cake stuck quite badly, causing it to fall out in big chunks. Luckily I managed to piece it back together somewhat decently so I could add the icing. I should know better by now that my pans are old and tend to make things stick, and also that if a recipe recommends using parchment paper, you should follow the instructions.

In spite of this mini disaster, I must say the cake is so delicious. I kept coming back to the pan for more bits and pieces of the broken stuff. The calories don’t count if it’s just from the broken bits, right?

In all seriousness, try the recipe. The ginger and chocolate combination is really satisfying and goes extremely well together. The icing seems strange at first, with ginger ale as an ingredient, but it really is the perfect topping for this cake.

Happy Holidays, everyone!