Gluten free, vegan chocolate cake

To make this dairy, egg and gluten free cake, you need to secure some pure cocoa powder. It can be found in health food stores. However, if there is no dairy allergy you can also use good quality cocoa powder found in the super market as it often contains skim milk along with sugar etc.

To make the cake you will need the following:

1 cup of almond meal flour

3/4 cup of chick pea flour

1/4 cup of cocoa powder

1 cup of sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

3 level teaspoons of egg replacer powder

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon of baking soda

 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil 

1 cup of almond milk

Raspberries and icing sugar to decorate

Mix together all the dry ingredients well in a mixing bowl with a spatula. I generally do not like my cakes very sweet, and one cup of sugar is perfect for me. But if you prefer your cakes sweeter, especially if you are using pure, unsweetened cocoa, you can add an extra 1/4 cup of sugar. Mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and add to the dry ingredients. Stir to mix but be careful not to over mix.

Place the mixture in a lined 20 cm cake tin, sit it on a baking tray and place it in a preheated fan forced oven (180 C) for  40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool the cake before taking it out of the tin. Place fresh raspberries and dust with icing sugar.

To make a chocolate sauce to accompany mix together two tablespoons of cocoa powder with 2 tablespoons of icing sugar and 1-2 tablespoons of apple juice and a few drops of oil. Add the juice slowly until you get the desired consistency. You can also use a thicker version of the sauce to ice the cake.