Cake for Christmas...and it's Gluten-free, Grain-free, Dairy-free, Sugar-free and Soy-free

Okay, so we're on a healing diet. That's great...we're putting our health and healing first.

That doesn't mean we wouldn't love a slice of cake for Christmas!

Good news.  Here's a beautiful cake with a moist, delicate spongy texture that will hold its shape for making layer cakes.  It's rich and satisfying without being too sweet.  And, importantly, it's good enough for company, which makes it an ideal holiday cake.

Best of all, this cake has no gluten or grains, soy or sugar.  Butter can be replaced with coconut oil, and milk can be replaced with almond milk for the dairy free version.  There's nothing in this cake that will monkey with your healing lifestyle.  So go ahead and enjoy a slice.  

Let's talk  frosting.  It's taken us awhile to develop sugar-free recipes for gooey, yummy, sweet satisfying frosting, but we're finally feeling that our frosting is really good.  We've included two chocolate frosting recipes below.  One is the gorgeous dense and chocolate-y Richmond frosting you see on the cake shown.  The second is a fluffy, airy, yummy concoction similar to the type of frosting you might find on cupcakes at a fancy cupcake store.  Choose your weapon!!  

Favorite Yellow Cake with Richmond Chocolate Frosting

 Favorite Yellow Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:

1 C Coconut flour

1 C Arrowroot starch

1 C Irish pastured butter (plus extra for coating the pans) softened at room temperature

½ C Coconut Crystals

¼ C Coconut Nectar

2 T Stevia

2 T Xylitol

1 C Almond Milk

8 Pastured eggs, separated

1 t Vanilla

2 t Cream of tartar

1 t Sea Salt

1 t Baking soda

Coat 2- 9” cake pans with butter, line bottom with parchment and coat parchment with butter. In a mixer bowl combine the egg whites and cream of tartar.  Beat on high speed until whites form stiff peaks.  Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter with the Coconut Crystals, Coconut Nectar, Stevia and Xylitol until fluffy and light colored.  In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, vanilla, and egg yolks until completely combined.  In a separate bowl, sift together the coconut flour, arrowroot, baking soda and salt.  Add half of the dry ingredients into the creamed butter mixture and beat again until fluffy, scraping the bowl with a spatula as necessary.  Add the milk mixture and the remainder of the dry ingredients into the creamed butter mixing bowl and beat again.  

Spoon half of the egg white mixture into the center of the mixing bowl and stir gently with a spatula to combine.  Add the remainder of the egg whites to the mixing bowl and gently fold the mixture together with the rubber spatula, folding from the outer edge down under and up to the center of the bowl until just mixed.   

Spoon half of the mixture into each of the prepared pans.  Bake for 25-30 minutes in the pre-heated oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center removes cleanly.  Cool for 15 minutes, run a knife along the outer edges and invert onto a cooling rack.  Cool completely before frosting.  Frost with Richmond Chocolate Frosting and garnish with Raspberries and a frosting of Xylitol crystals.

Richmond Chocolate Frosting-- 

Richmond Chocolate Frosting (Grain-Free Sugar-Free Version)

This is a very dark, rich and creamy frosting for chocolate lovers.

Ingredients

1 C Raw organic cacao butter (Cacao butter comes in chunks, so I measure using displacement method in a glass measuring cup.  I add two cups of water and then chunks of cacao until the total volume is 3 cups. Drain the water.)

8 oz. Unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped into pieces

½ C Almond butter

6 T Grass Fed Butter

½ C Coconut Crystals

½ C Coconut Nectar

4 T Stevia

3 T Xylitol

2 C Arrowroot Starch

2 t Vanilla

½ C Organic Heavy Cream

In a double boiler over medium heat, add the cacao butter, chocolate, almond butter, and butter.  Stir as ingredients melt.  Add the Coconut Crystals, Coconut Nectar, Stevia and Xylitol.  Stir until the crystals melt.  Turn off the heat but keep on warm stove top.  Stirring, add the arrowroot starch a small amount at a time until the entire amount is absorbed the mixture is shiny (the oil is a little separated).  Stir in vanilla.  Add the organic heavy cream in small amounts, beating with a beater after each addition.  Beat until the mixture is shiny, smooth and the cream is fully absorbed.  Makes about four cups or enough to frost a three layer cake.  Frost the cake when the frosting is still warm, and place in a cool spot so frosting becomes firmer. 

Fluffy Chocolate Frosting--  We've been working hard on developing some good frosting recipes lately. If you're in the mood for a light and fluffy chocolate frosting, the kind you might get on a cupcake from a fancy cupcake store, here's our sugar-free, dairy-free, grain-free option.  It's delicious and the texture is perfect.  

Fluffy Chocolate Frosting

1 c palm shortening

3 T Coconut Nectar

1 ½ t powdered stevia  (We use Trader Joe's Powdered Stevia for baking.)

6 T arrowroot flour

2 t vanilla

¼ t salt

4 T cocoa powder unsweetened

4 T cocoa butter melted but cooled to slightly warm

Put all ingredients except cocoa butter in a mixer with a paddle blade and mix.  Drizzle warm cocoa butter into mixer with blade running and whip until mixture is fluffy.  This frosting will freeze beautifully.  After defrosting, whip again until texture is fluffy.  

Should you eat cake everyday?  We don't recommend that you eat these kinds of desserts every day. Even though the wheat and sugar you find in a regular cake has been removed, there are arrowroot and coconut sugar in this recipe, which does raise the carb count somewhat.  Overall, this cake has a much lower carb count than a regular cake which makes it a significantly healthier choice.  Like many good things in life, just be smart and keep it in moderation.

On a daily basis, we prefer to eat healthy, natural, sugarless foods, of course.   However, there are occasions likes birthdays, Christmas and summer pool parties where it's important that we do not feel like we are missing out.  And this is even more important if we are preparing special diets for children. The goal is to eat the highest quality and most healing foods as often as possible while giving ourselves permission to mix in an occasion "treat" so that life feels normal and satisfying.   

   

By the way, the higher fiber, protein and fat content in our converted dessert recipes definitely ups the healing factor.  The fat and protein slow the sugar from entering the bloodstream as rapidly.

We thought you might be curious to see a comparison of total carb count for our adapted yellow cake  recipe vs a standard yellow cake recipe.  As you can see, our cake comes out at half the carbs.

Yellow Cake	Carbs (Total – Fiber)	Our Yellow Cake	Carbs (Total – Fiber)
3 cups sifted cake flour	285	1 C Coconut flour	24 G
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder	0	1 C Arrowroot starch	108 G
1/2 teaspoons salt	0	1 C Irish pastured butter (plus extra for coating the pans) softened at room temperature	0
1 3/4 cups sugar	350	½ C Coconut Crystals	96
2/3 cup butter or margarine	0	¼ C Coconut Nectar	52
2 eggs	0	2 T Stevia	0
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla	0	2 T Xylitol	24
1 1/4 cups whole milk	16	1 C Unsweetened Almond Milk	0
		8 Pastured eggs, separated	0
		1 t Vanilla	0
		2 t Cream of tartar	2
		1 t Sea Salt	0
		1 t Baking soda	0
Total carbs	651		306

"The fat's going down, the sugar's going up, and we're all getting sick." 

And finally, this is an 11-minute edited video of a 90 minute lecture by Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MC, UCSF, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, on the subject of the damage that consumption of sugary foods will do to the body.  To see the original version, click here.