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.

 

Chocolate Chantilly, dairy free

Dear all, I firmly believe in the healing powers of chocolate. Heartache, depression and disappointments seem a bit easier to digest with a solid injection of chocolate. One of my favourite forms of absorption is chocolate mousse. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find fresh cream in Goa – a basic component of a proper chocolate mousse. Another difficulty with the traditional recipe is the use of fresh eggs, which can be dangerous in this tropical climate. In my quest for good living, I discovered Heston Blumenthal’s recipe for Chocolate Chantilly. This recipe is a fine example of molecular gastronomy, a branch of cooking, which is quite alien to me. However, the simplicity of the recipe convinced me. The trick is a temperature shock for the melted chocolate combined with constant whipping. Naturally, a lot can go wrong. My first attempt ended in disaster with chocolate drops all over the counter, the walls and myself. My second attempt went so well, that I am happy to share it with you. I use less liquid than Heston and I have replaced the water in his recipe with a mixture of coconut milk and coffee. Heston advises to take only best quality chocolate. Living on a budget, I have used normal dark cooking chocolate. Its taste does not compare to my favourite Lindt chocolate with 70 percent cocoa. Adding coffee however, masks the lack of depth of flavour sufficiently for my humble taste. The original recipe deals with 200 grams of chocolate. This amount seemed ridiculously small considering my two chocoholics in the house. When I go to all the trouble of making Chocolate Chantilly, I want an amount that does not vanish in one go. For this reason I have used 500 grams, which gives you around eight decent servings. Wishing you happy cooking, always! Kornelia Santoro with family   Chocolate Chantilly Ingredients (for 8 servings):   500 grams chocolate (either dark or milk chocolate) 200 millilitres coconut milk 150 millilitres strong coffee, best mocha or espresso 1 tablespoon vanilla essence ice Method:   To make this recipe work, you need a large amount of ice. I filled a stainless steel bowl with about 1.5 litres of water and stuck it in my freezer overnight. Before melting the chocolate, I dropped the ice into a bigger bowl and added another litre of water. I kept this in the fridge until needed.   Cut the chocolate into small pieces. This is easily done when the chocolate has room temperature. Place the chocolate into a pot and add the coconut milk, the vanilla essence and the coffee. Now put this pot into a bigger pot with some water in it. The water should just about touch the bottom of the smaller pot. Switch on the fire and melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally.   When the chocolate has melted, switch off the fire. Take out your bowl with the ice water from the fridge, pour the melted chocolate into a mixing bowl and place this bowl into the ice water. Now is the time to constantly whisk this mixture. If you don’t want a serious workout for your arm muscles, take an electric hand mixer. After a few minutes, the chocolate mix should start to thicken. When you have reached the consistency of a creamy mousse, you are done. This should not take longer than ten minutes and your mousse should look like the picture here.   If it did not work, try again. Maybe you have added too much liquid. Heston and other online chefs use at least as much fluid as chocolate. I did this in my first try, but it turned out far too runny. You can read about the benefits of cocoa here: http://www.mediterraneancooking.in/nutritional-values/surprise-surprise-cacao-is-healthy More recipes at Kornelia's Kitchen Sign up for my monthly newsletter