and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”–World Health Organization, 1948
I made my mom this cake for Mother’s Day and it was a hit! I used to make this recipe years ago and had forgotten about it till I was searching through a recipe book I created, well, 20 years ago. I found some great recipes that I can make gluten free and I found this gem that is a naturally gluten free dessert. This cake is so moist and has the bright flavors of spring and is really fun to make! It was a perfect cake for Mother’s Day brunch and I served it with a dollop of heavy cream.
Tuscan Tangerine Almond Cake
| 4-6 tangerines or clementines, preferably seedless |
| 2 cups of raw, soaked (optional) almonds |
| 4 eggs, 2 egg yolks |
| 1 cup of organic sugar or raw honey (for the Paleo peeps) |
| 1 tsp. baking soda |
Note: You will need a food processor for the recipe.
Note: You may use a 9″, 10″ or 11″ cake round or an 8X8 square cake pan for this recipe.
Soak almonds for a minimum of 2 hours while you’re cooking the clementines or tangerines. This step is optional but soaking releases the oils of the nut for a richer and moister cake since there is no butter in the cake.
Cover tangerines in water in a big pot and bring to a boil then reduce to low and simmer for two hours.
Drain the tangerines and slice them in half to let them cool. Once they are cooled pick out all the seeds. Or if you can find seedless tangerines or clementines then skip this step.
Preheat the oven to 350* and prepare a cake pan with butter then parchment. This is a
Very Moist and Dense Cake with All the Flavors of Spring
very sticky, dense cake so you will need parchment to pull the cake out of the pan. It won’t be enough to butter and flour the pan. After you put parchment in the pan, spray the parchment with oil or spread some butter on it and the sides of the pan.
Drain the almonds and rinse them under cool water.
Put the almonds in a food processor fitted with the chopping blade. Grind the almonds on pulse about 10 times.
Next, add the tangerines and chop the tangerines and almonds together on pulse several times.
Next, add the eggs and egg yolks and pulse blend again.
Finally add your sugar or honey and baking powder and pulse blend until all ingredients
Tuscan Tangerine Almond Cake
are well incorporated. The batter will be lumpy because the almonds won’t be totally blended, this is exactly what you want.
Now pour the entire batter into your prepared pan. You don’t want to use two pans, just one. It will seem like you are over-filling the pan but you’re not.
Next put the pan into the oven for 40 minutes uncovered. Then cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake covered for another 40-60 minutes.
Let cool and serve with whipped cream or creme fraiche.
Buon Appetito! And LMK what you think!
I found a new, fun toy…chestnut flour! There is this great company Dowd & Rogers that
Dowd & Rogers Italian Chestnut Flour
make wonderful, gluten free, artisanal baking flours. Their ethos and aesthetic is right up my ally, very simple, delicious, lo-fi and awesome quality. My favorite product of theirs so far is their Italian Chestnut Flour. Last night I used it in a simple recipe that really lets the taste and texture of this flour stand out, shortbread! This shortbread recipe is based on my all-time favorite shortbread recipe, Tassajara shortbread, from the cookbook The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. What a joy this book is for any baker!
Getting back to the chestnut flour, it has a natural sweetness to it already so you don’t need as much sugar as with other flours. Also, chestnut flour is a wonderful thickener in soups and gravies instead of cornstarch.
This recipe is fun and super easy!
Chestnut Shortbread Buttons (Tassajara Style)
| 2 cups of Dowd & Rogers Italian Chestnut Flour |
| 1/4 cup powdered sugar |
| 1/4 tsp. sea salt |
| 1 cup butter, softened |
| 1 tsp. vanilla extract |
In a bowl combine the flour, sugar and salt.
Next add your softened butter and combine it with the flour using a fork or a mixer.
While you’re incorporating the butter add your vanilla extract and continue to mix.
Once the butter is well incorporated, put a little chestnut flour on your hands and take your dough and mold it into a ball. Wrap it in saran wrap and chill it in the fridge for an hour.
Once chilled, take your dough and roll it on a cutting board with your hands using a little chestnut flour on the board. Roll your dough into a 12″ long log. Re-wrap it in the saran wrap and stick it back into the fridge for another hour or over night.
Preheat your oven to 350*. Prepare two cookie sheets with parchment or spray them with oil.
Take out your dough and cut the roll into 1/8″ to 1/4″ thickness and place place them on your cookie sheet about 1″ apart from each other. You can get about 15 on each sheet.
Next take a pointy chopstick or two-pronged fork and create 4 little indentations in the center of each cookie.
Chestnut Shortbread Buttons
Bake your cookies for 7-8 minutes. Let cool. Eat.
Enjoy the nutty, sweet, buttery yumminess of these Italian Chestnut Shortbread buttons. Over the next few weeks I’ll be experimenting with chestnut flour in other baking recipes so stop back soon!
Click Here to read more about the nutrition of chestnuts.
Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.
I love this recipe because it’s super, super easy to make, only 4 or 5 ingredients, no baking
Artisana Raw 100% Organic Coconut Butter
and really yummy and a perfect, sweet, summer treat.
You can find coconut butter at Whole Foods grocery store or your local health food store. My favorite brand is Artisana…
Coconut Lemon Fudge
| 2 Tbsp organic, cold-pressed coconut oil |
| 1 cup raw, organic coconut butter |
| 1-2 Tbsp. organic honey (raw if available) |
| 1/2 tsp. lemon extract or 1 drop lemon essential oil |
| grated rind of one organic lemon |
Prepare a baking sheet with parchment covering the entire bottom of the sheet and set aside.
Over low heat warm the coconut oil and butter in a pan until melted and stir until creamy.
Take it off the burner and add a Tbsp of honey. Add more honey if you would like it sweeter. Stir the honey into the warm coconut mixture until it is well blended and melted into the coconut oil mixture.
Add your lemon extract or essential oil and the lemon rind and stir mixture until everything is well blended.
Gluten Free and Paleo Coconut Lemon Fudge
Alternative: Instead of lemon extract, try adding a 1/2 tsp. of almond extract or 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon sprinkled into warm mixture and well blended. Or try your own creative ideas!
Pour fudge out onto parchment covered baking sheet and let chill in the refrigerator for two hours. Then break into pieces and store in a glass or plastic tupperware in the fridge.
What do you think?
I have been trying to make a delicious bread recipe for the last 8 months. I’ve been
Gluten Free, Grain Free Bread
experimenting with traditional bread-making techniques and coming up with my own and I think I finally have an almost perfect bread recipe. The taste is quite delicious and the recipe is really easy. I’m still going to continue to tinker with it so I can recreate that bready mouth feel we all love about bread but this stuff comes pretty close.
Gluten Free, Grain Free Bread
| 2 cups of almond flour |
| 1 tsp. baking soda |
| 1/4 tsp. sea salt |
| 1 Tbsp. organic, grass-fed butter |
| 1/2 cup of milk |
| 1 organic egg |
| 1 tsp. organic honey |
| 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar or white vinegar |
Preheat oven to 300*.
Spray bread pan with gluten free baking spray or butter your pan. You may choose to line your pan with parchment so it’s easier to take the bread out of the pan when you’re done but this is a hearty bread that will withstand a little manhandling.
In a bowl, combine the almond flour, baking soda and sea salt.
Next, cut your butter into small cubes and then cut the cubes into the flour mixture using
Bread is the perfect delivery system for butter.
two knives or a fork. Your mixture will be dry and crumbly. There is no need to make sure
the butter is fully combined with the flour.
Next, make a well in the middle of your flour mixture and add your milk, egg, honey and vinegar and mix all ingredients well.
Using a rubber spatula pour your bread mixture into your prepared bread pan and bake for 30 minutes at 300*.
Let cool before removing from pan.
This is a super easy bread recipe that I will continue perfecting for you. LMK what you think when you give it a go.
I’m not a vegan but I got some fantastic products from this great company, Chosen Foods.
Vegan Lemon Chia Seed Scones
I was particularly interested in what I could do with the avocado oil and the chia seeds they sent. Apparently you can use chia seeds as an egg substitute, much like flax seeds. I remembered using flax seeds as an “egg” binding when I was a raw vegan. So I started experimenting around in my kitchen, like I love to do, and came up with a vegan version of the lemon poppy seed scone, substituting chia seeds for poppy seeds. The results were really scrumptious. I’m not really a crust person. Who is? The crust is not usually the best part of a baked good, but this crust is outrageous. So flaky and buttery with a little bit of crunch to it. These scones are a little bit chewier than a scone made with white flour or almond flour but the chewiness is really yummy. To stick with the vegan theme, spread a dollop of coconut oil or butter on the finish product and you’re in a little bit of heaven.
Vegan Lemon Chia Seed Scones
| 3 cups almond flour |
| 4 Tbsp. organic sugar |
| 2 tsp. baking soda |
| 1/4 tsp. sea salt |
| the grated peel of one organic lemon |
| 1/4 cup Chosen Foods avocado oil |
| 1/2 cup water |
| 2 Tbsp. Chosen Foods chia seeds |
Preheat your oven to 350*. Take a round 9″ cake pan and lightly coat it with some Chosen Foods avocado oil and set the pan aside.
In a bowl mix combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and sea salt. Then grate your lemon over the bowl, making sure you grate the whole lemon. Set your bowl aside.
In a small bowl combine the water and chia seeds, stir a bit and let stand for a few minutes so it can gel up. This will become your egg substitute and binder for the scones as well as your “poppy seeds”.
While the chia seeds are jelling add the avocado oil to your dry ingredients and mix well with a fork. At this stage the mixture will be crumbly.
At this point the chia seeds should be ready. It takes seconds to make this bio-available gel which I use as a good source of Omega 3 oils in my morning smoothies too! Pour your chia seed gel into your flour mixture and combine all ingredients with a fork. Your mixture will look more like dough than cake batter. If you prefer a cakier, or English scone, now is the time to add 1/2 cup of your favorite milk substitute (almond milk, rice milk, etc.). Being of Irish and Scottish decent, I prefer a crumblier, dryer scone so I don’t add any liquid to my scone recipe. I’m weird.
Put your dough into your oiled cake pan and smoosh it around with your fingers until it fills the bottom and sides of the pan.
Now this is the fun part. You’re going to score your scones before you bake them so they’re
Vegan Lemon Chia Seed Scones
easier to separate after they’re baked. Take a butter knife (you want a knife with a bit of a thicker edge to it than a steak knife) and draw a line dividing the dough into two equal halves. Then draw a line dividing the dough into quarters. Next, draw lines dividing each quarter into two scones. Don’t cut all the way down to the bottom of the dough. Just cut about a 1/4 of an inch down and this will give your scones an outline for cutting them after they are done baking.
Pop your pan into the oven and bake for 35 minutes at 350*. When they’re done and cooled a bit you can pull them apart or finishing cutting them with your knife.
Enjoy!
Here’s another fabulous gluten free baking recipe…crepes! Last week a friend of mine wanted me to join him and his kids on Google+ for a private cooking lesson. I was so flattered! Alex, my friend, said he wanted to make pancakes for his daughter, Breanna, and didn’t know how and wanted me to show him. He lives in San Francisco. I live in LA. So we decided to meet on Google+.
At the last minute he told me Breanna had been having pancakes all week and was sick of pancakes and wanted to make crepes. I’ve made crepes before but never with almond flour, my go-to flour for staying gluten free. I was a little nervous that it wouldn’t work but I knew they were using regular white flour so their crepes would come out great either way. My crepes were a crap shoot.
It worked! I made beautiful crepes and stuffed them with strawberries and powdered sugar and they were delish! So check out this recipe and LMK what you think!
Gluten Free Baking Recipe – Crepes
| 1 cup almond flour, not almond meal |
| 1/2 cup milk or milk substitute |
| 1/2 water |
| 2 eggs |
| 1/2 tsp. sea salt |
| 2 tbsp melted butter or coconut oil or avocado oil |
Crack eggs into almond flour and mix until the mixture becomes gooey and pasty. Then add the water, milk and salt. Mix well. Finally add the butter and mix until the batter is smooth. It might be slightly lumpy and that’s totally fine.
Next spray a little oil onto a griddle pan and heat the pan on medium high heat. A great way to tell if the griddle is ready is to put a little water on your fingers and flick it into the pan. If the water sizzles then your pan is ready.
Crepes are all about your tilting and swirling technique. Just remember: tilt and swirl. Tilt and swirl people. It’s all in the wrist. Ready?
Pour about 1/4 cup batter onto the center of the griddle. Tilt your griddle by the handle and swirl the batter around as it makes a bigger and bigger circle. When you’ve got no more wet batter to swirl around lay it back on the burner and continue cooking about a minute, two minutes max. Then flip it over and let brown for just another 30 seconds. This batter will make about 8 crepes.
Serve them with fresh cut strawberries and powdered sugar, Nutella or raspberry jam and toasted walnuts. Put some strawberries into the center of a crepe or smear some Nutella in the center and then fold over twice and sprinkle with a little powdered sugar.
Gluten Free Baking Recipe - Crepes
I like to make my crepes savory by sauteing some mushrooms in a little butter and thyme. Slice up some brie or another soft yummy cheese. Next put your mushroom mixture and cheese into the crepe and fold it over like an omelette or a quesadilla. Then stick it into a heated oven (about 200*) to let the cheese melt while you are making the rest of your crepes. Bon Appetit!
Have you made this gluten free baking recipe? If so, LMK! Would love to hear your feedback!
This is one of my most favorite gluten free dairy free dessert recipes so far because it is soooooo easy! And the result is deep, dark, velvety rich, chocolate buttercream. It’s out of control good!
Gluten Free Dairy Free Dessert Recipe – Chocolate Buttercream
| 1/2 cup grapeseed oil |
| 1 cup organic powdered sugar |
| 1/2-3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder |
| 1 tbsp. McCormick vanilla extract |
| pinch of sea salt |
Gluten Free Dairy Free Dessert Topping - Chocolate Buttercream
Put all ingredients into a mixer bowl and beat with a hand beater or stand mixer until all ingredients are well blended and creamed together. Put buttercream in refrigerator for 1 hour or until ready to use. Before using, mix again, mixing until sheen forms on buttercream, about 20-30 seconds and then frost cupcakes or cake.
Use this buttercream for the gluten free dairy free chocolate cupcakes! And let me know what you think! Would love your feedback on this one:)
I’ve been getting more requests for gluten free dairy free dessert recipes and ideas so I’m adding a brand new category to my posts and archives. Read on to discover the inspiration…
I’m back working with my mentor, celebrity chef, Sharry Billings! She’s so exclusive she doesn’t have a website! She is a private chef and nutrition consultant to some of the biggest names in Hollywood and she is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I am so excited to be working with her again because she is really challenging me in the kitchen! The other day she asked me if I have a gluten free, dairy free chocolate cake recipe. She has a client who loves chocolate cake and can never eat it because he is gluten free and dairy free. What a conundrum! And I thought just being gluten free was limiting! Oi vey. Btw, for years I thought I was lactose intolerant because if I drank milk I would get severe tummy aches that lasted for about 3 days with all the accompanying unpleasant emissions one can think of, that is, until a started eating and drinking raw milk and raw dairy. Click here for more information on the lowdown for raw dairy.
But I digress. Back to gluten free dairy free dessert. I was really stumped as to how to make a gluten free dairy free chocolate cake that tastes like something you want to eat. It’s easy to break out the rice flour, tapioca starch, canola oil, corn oil, etc. but the end result of those ingredients are, to me, very dry and tasteless. Those ingredients, both nutritionally and taste-wise are not up to my standards at all. So I went into the kitchen and started tampering with my current gluten free chocolate cake recipe to see if I could make it dairy free as well. One of my inspirations for starting my own recipe blog is Elana Amsterdam of Elana’s Pantry. I use her site as a reference point from time to time for my own creations. So I visited her website once again for a little inspiration and remembered that she uses grapeseed oil as a substitute for butter in her recipes. I had thought about using coconut oil but I wanted to create a chocolate cake that tastes like old fashioned homemade chocolate cake. So I tinkered with my recipe and came up with a gluten free dairy free chocolate cake recipe that, if I may humbly say, is pretty fricking great! Here it is…
| 1/2 cup blanched almond flour |
| 1/4 cup coconut flour |
| 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder |
| 1/2 tsp. baking soda |
| 1/2 tsp. sea salt |
| 1 oz. Scharffen Berger unsweetened dark baking chocolate |
| 3/4 cup sugar |
| 1/2 cup grapeseed oil |
| 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk |
| 1 tbsp. vanilla extract |
| 1 tsp. white vinegar |
| 2 eggs |
Note: This is a recipe for gluten free dairy free chocolate cupcakes but you can modify it and use it as a cake recipe:
This recipe will make an 8X8 inch square cake. Double the recipe for a 9X13 cake pan or two 9in. cake rounds.
Pour a little grapeseed oil into your baking pan(s) and, using a basting brush, wipe the entire pan and sides with oil. Line pan(s) with parchment and pour a little more oil over the parchment and brush the oil all over the parchment. Set aside.
Line a 12-cupcake pan with cupcake liners and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350*.
In a bowl combine flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and sea salt. Set aside.
Gluten Free Dairy Free Dessert - Old Fashioned Chocolate Cupcakes
In a double boiler on medium heat put in the grapeseed oil, sugar and chocolate and let them melt for about 5-7 minutes. Whisk to combine ingredients and then take top pan of double boiler off stove and let cool for about 3-5 minutes. You will combine all the rest of the ingredients in this pan.
When chocolate mixture has cooled to warm add eggs, vanilla and vinegar and mix well with your whisk. Next add the flour mixture and unsweetened almond milk alternately in 2 batches. Whisk well to incorporate all ingredients.
Fill each cupcake liner to half with the batter. Bake cupcakes for 15 minutes. Cool.
Frost with gluten free dairy free Chocolate Buttercream frosting.
For the square or round cake pour into your prepared baking pan(s) and bake for 30 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
I would love, love, love your feedback on this recipe! Are you gluten free and dairy free? Would you like to see more gluten free dairy free dessert recipes? LMK below!
For a lot of people around the country it’s still chilly and wintry. So here’s a great gluten free baking recipe that will warm your hearts and tummies, chocolate bread pudding. Who doesn’t love the decadence of bread pudding?!? So try the gluten free version and let me know what you think!
| 1 Chocolate Cake Recipe |
| 2 Tbsp. melted butter |
| 2 eggs |
| 1 cup half&half or whole milk |
| 2 tsp. McCormick vanilla extract |
| 1/2 cup brown sugar |
| 1 cup gluten free chocolate chips |
Make the chocolate cake following the recipe here. Don’t make the buttercream since we’ll be doing a whole different decadent thing with our cake.
Preheat oven to 350*. Prepare one cookie sheet with parchment paper, set aside. Butter the sides and bottom of a 9×9 round or square casserole or custard dish.
Cut the chocolate cake into bite-sized cubes. Then lay the cubes on the cookie sheet and drizzle or brush the melted butter over the cubes. Place cookie sheet into the oven and bake the cubes for about 20 minutes or until they have crispy edges.
Gluten Free Baking Recipe - Chocolate Bread Pudding
While the chocolate cake cubes are baking, in a bowl whisk the two eggs and half&half or milk until well blended and smooth. Add the vanilla and brown sugar and whisk until blended.
(Note that the brown sugar will tend to want to settle at the bottom after you stop whisking. That’s ok, just give it a good whisk just before you pour it onto the bread pieces and use a rubber spatula to scrape out the remaining brown sugar bits onto the cubes). Last add the chocolate chips. Set custard mixture aside.
After the chocolate bread cubes have baked let them cool until warm to the touch. Next put them into your buttered dish. Give the custard mixture one last good whisk and pour the mixture over the bread cubes. Let the pudding rest for about 20 minutes so the bread absorbs the custard. Then bake at 350* for 40-45 minutes. Let cool for about 10 minutes and serve warm with a dollop of freshly whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Let me know what you think of this gluten free baking recipe below! Would love your feedback;)
Looking for a gluten free chocolate cake recipe? You ain’t tried nothin yet baby!
I was telling one of my readers the other day that I really consider myself GF 3.0. Meaning, several years ago when people were going gluten free, before it was all the rage, there was GF 1.0 where people just cut out everything with wheat, barley and rye and went without the fun stuff. There were no gluten free fancy flour combos on the market. There were no gluten free bakeries. There was just going to a party and sticking to the cold cuts and cheese and the fruit tray for something sweet.
Next came GF 2.0. This era saw the fancy GF flours, experimenting with all kinds of “glues” like flax meal, agar flakes and xantham gum to get other grain flours to act like gluten and of course the explosion of gluten free bakeries serving their versions of cupcakes, brownies and cookies. Try as they might their goods were a valiant attempt yet a poor substitute for that warm, gooey, sinfully delicious, just-like-mama-made taste of the hated and coveted gluten-filled delectables.
Enter the era of GF 3.0 where taste and quality ingredients actually have come to play bolder roles in this daring new gluten free world. Thank God. This is where I come in. I have a background in professional baking and love the science behind it so I am constantly playing and experimenting in order to find the closest match to our beloved favorites without sacrificing taste or quality. I don’t use xantham gum, tapioca starch, potato starch or any other kinds of glues or thickeners. I stick to the science of baking incorporating new ingredients like almond flour, coconut flour, chestnut flour and all the old standbys: butter, sugar and eggs and they haven’t let me down yet!
So here is my latest foray into the decadence of gluten without the gluten, my gluten free chocolate cake recipe!
| 1 cup Honeyville blanched almond flour |
| 1/2 cup Coconut Secret Raw coconut flour |
| 1/2 tsp. baking soda |
| 1/2 tsp. sea salt |
| 1 oz. coarsely chopped organic unsweetened chocolate |
| 3/4 cup organic granulated sugar |
| 1/2 stick, 4oz., unsalted butter |
| 1/2 cup organic half&half or whole milk |
| 1 tsp. McCormick’s vanilla extract |
| 1 tsp. white vinegar |
| 2 eggs |
Note #1: This recipe makes one 8X8 in. square cake. If you want to make two 9 in. round cakes or a 9X13 sheet cake simply double the recipe.
Note #2: Although the recipe calls for coconut flour it does not taste like coconut at all. Coconut flour adds the necessary denseness that a traditional chocolate cake needs and deserves. In my experience Coconut Secret Raw coconut flour is one of the best coconut flours on the market and is very versatile so when you don’t want a coconut flavor it can be well masked.
Note #3: A word about chocolate. I don’t mess around. I use the best brands on the market, which tend to not have ingredients like soy emulsifiers in them. My favorite is Scharffen Berger unsweetened dark chocolate. It is 99% cacao and it’s only ingredients are cacao beans and whole vanilla beans. It’s taste is incomparable.
Let’s Go!
Butter an 8X8 baking pan.Line pan(s) with parchment and butter the parchment, including sides of pan and parchment. Allow parchment to hang over two of the sides so you can pull the cake out if you don’t have a removable bottomed pan. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350*.
In the top of a double boiler on medium heat put in the butter, sugar and chocolate and let
melt until completely melted, about 5-7 minutes. Whisk to combine ingredients and then take top pan of double boiler off of the stove and let cool for about 3-5 minutes. You will combine all the rest of the ingredients in this pan. Set this pan aside for now to let cool while you mix the dry ingredients.
In a bowl combine flours, baking soda and sea salt. Set aside.
When chocolate mixture has cooled to warm add eggs, vanilla and vinegar and mix well with your whisk. Next add the flour mixture and the half&half or milk alternately in 3 batches. Whisk well to incorporate all ingredients. Pour into your prepared baking pan.
Bake for 30 minutes. Cool. Frost with Chocolate Buttercream, recipe below.
Chocolate Buttercream
| 1/2 lb., 2 sticks of unsalted, softened, organic butter |
| 1/2 cup organic powdered sugar, sifted |
| 1/4-1/2 cup unsweetened organic cocoa powder |
| pinch of sea salt |
| 1 tsp. McCormick’s vanilla extract |
In a bowl combine all ingredients and beat on low until fluffy and well combined. Add more cocoa powder if you want a more chocolaty taste. This recipe will completely frost an 8X8 square cake. If you are making two 9X9 round cakes or 9X13 sheet cake, double the recipe. Or use your favorite frosting recipe!
Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Recipe
So what do you think of this gluten free chocolate cake recipe with chocolate buttercream? I made this cake for my friend Jennifer Feraday’s birthday and everyone raved! LMK your thoughts. I truly value your feedback.
