Dairy-free Chocolate Cake

My men cherish their sweet tooth. My husband and I grew up during the good old times when nobody considered sugar harmful or dangerous. Sweet innocence! Nowadays I feel guilty that I did not raise our son sugar free. The list of harmful effects for consuming refined sugar seems endless: depression, diabetes, tooth decay, osteoporosis, insulin sensitivity…when you do a little research on the internet, you end up convinced that sugar is the enemy.

But what would be life without a little sweetness? When I read all the well meant messages about the evils of sugar I feel sometimes compelled to shout: Give me some sugar to blur the rough edges! Ok, I never really shout, but I want to enjoy a sweet treat once in a while and I want to be able to feed my men without feeling like a monster.

One way to avoid sugar would be replacing it with chemical substitutes. Unfortunately, these substitutes are at least as harmful as sugar itself. The only chemical without proven long term harmful effects seems to be sucralose which is widely sold now as sugar substitute for diabetics. The reason might be the matter of fact that sucralose is a relatively new product. On the packet is printed ‘not recommended for children’. Do I need to write more?

Honey does not offer a solution because it tastes different than sugar and is full of pesticides. I have tried stevia which I found as a dried herb. So far, all my experiments with stevia have failed miserably.

Luckily there is one sugar product available in India which - I hope - avoids most of the pitfalls of refined sugar: Raw sugar from the Mumbai-based company Conscious Food. I avoid advertising products on my newsletter, but here I make an exception. The company promises that no chemicals are used in making this sugar. It is slightly brown, but it tastes like ‘normal’ sugar. Whenever I can, I use this raw sugar in my sweets although it costs more than double than normal sugar. The philosophy of Conscious Food is to work to a standard, not to a price. They offer natural and organic food products that come from small organic farms all over the country. I am happy to pay some more money to support these people.

I developed the recipe for this dairy free chocolate cake with walnuts because my son suffers from food allergies. I use raw sugar for the cake and normal icing sugar to give it a polished look. If you want a really healthy cake, just forget about the icing.

Wishing you happy cooking, always!

Kornelia Santoro with family

Dairy-free Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 2 cups raw sugar
• 200 grams walnuts
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup cold pressed coconut oil
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup icing sugar
• Butter or coconut oil to grease the cake dish

Method:

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Spread butter or coconut oil over the walls of a round cake dish with a diameter of 26 centimetres.

Grind the walnuts in a blender.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and the vanilla essence and stir it well.

Adjoin the cocoa, the coconut oil and the walnuts and stir.

Mix the flour with the baking powder, add it to the mixing bowl and combine well. Fill the dough immediately into the cake dish and put it into the oven.

Bake at 190 degrees for around 40 minutes. You can check if your cake is done with the help of a toothpick: Insert it in the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, your cake is ready.

For the icing mix the icing sugar in a little bowl with just enough water to melt it. Around two tablespoons are enough to get a thick icing sugar solution.

Spread this over the cake and let it set.

For gas oven: Preheat the gas oven to lowest temperature for around five minutes.

Place the cake in the middle of the oven for around 25 to 30 minutes. When you see that the batter has set, turn off the heat from the bottom. Turn on the grill and give it five to ten minutes longer.