Chocolate Flour-less Cake.

This week I had a request for a flour-less chocolate cake and a sugar-free birthday cake, so I put my baking skillz to the test. With some research and a little development I adapted a few recipes that I studied into one of my own.

Flour-less cakes, as I found out are loaded with eggs, butter and heavy cream. This was going to pose a problem in converting it to being vegan. Although I continued to research other vegan flour-less cakes and came up with a compromise. The finished product of a fudgey, dense and rich cake is what I was looking for, as well as, vegan. Many of the recipes called for 4-5 eggs, which I had substituted with Ener-g egg replacer. As for the butter and cream, I had two, not so obvious, choices pureed pumpkin or black-eyed peas, yes, black-eyed peas. For today's

experiment I chose the pumpkin. It seems like a reasonable choice, but I am not opposed to using the peas and will give it a try tomorrow.

Here is what I did,

1/2 Cup coffee, hot

7 oz. dark chocolate

1 1/2 Cup soy milk, warm

1 T vanilla

1 3/4 Cup pumpkin puree

1 1/4 Cup brown sugar

1/2 Cup brown rice flour

2 T tapioca starch

1 T egg replacer

1 t xanthum gum

1/2 t salt

1 1/2 t baking powder

1 t cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Place a piece of wax paper on bottom of a 9" spring form pan and grease.
2. Place the coffee, chocolate and soy milk in a blender and process until chocolate is melted. Then add pumpkin and vanilla and continue until smooth.
3. Add remainder of ingredients and blend until smooth batter remains, scraping the sides as needed.
4. Pour batter into prepared spring form pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until the center is firm. Remove and let cool and wire rack, then refrigerate for at least two hours.

Finish with some fresh fruit, mint and a sprinkle of powdered sugar. Stay tuned for

the sugar-free birthday cake, as it is in the works.

Enjoy.

Vegan Chef Period.

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