We had a get-together this weekend at Struan Farm to celebrate a family birthday. Son Daniel visited with granddaughters Ella and Livvy and their brother Toby. Toby is on a dairy free diet at the moment. We've done gluten free and vegan before, and I'm never one to shirk from a challenge. So I was onto recipes once his visit was confirmed. Then the hunt for the more obscure ingredients started. (Did you know that they sell a vegan cheese called "mozzarella alternative?" At least they do in Te Awamutu Countdown. I used this for Toby's portion of prawns with tomato & feta with rice for dinner.)
On the treat side I tried making two types of non-dairy frozen fudge from Donna Hay "Fresh & Light" Issue 8, "coffee chocolate fudge" and "chai cashew fudge." Both involved cashews soaked in boiling water for a period of time that are then pureed with various ingredients before being frozen and cut. The recipes also exclude refined sugar, using maple syrup, honey and/or dates. The "coffee chocolate" version calls for raw cacao powder and chocolate (non-dairy) covered cacao nibs, which I sourced on the internet from PantryZen.
I found the chocolate one decidedly unsweet, almost bitter, so it wasn't served to the troops. It went into the bin. The second looked like grey mush when I put it into the freezer, but I tried to stay optimistic. After freezing it was to be dusted with a cashew praline made with cashews roasted in honey and pulverised in the food processor. This last step was somewhat encouraging in terms of colour, consistency and flavour, but regrettably it didn't rescue the situation. While the praline did help provide sweetness and crunch, and the fudge didn't taste all that bad, who wants to eat grey fudge? So much for the non-dairy frozen fudge!
The next recipe I tested out from this same issue was "peanut butter and banana loaf." I substituted non-dairy coconut yogurt for the Greek yogurt called for after checking with Mr. Google for substitutions that would work. The recipe called for "rapadura" sugar, which required searching over hill, dale and the internet to source. Thanks to Dante's in Cambridge for solving that problem! I was back on home turf, this looked like a normal batter. The recipe calls for wholemeal spelt flour, wholegrain oats, mashed banana, peanut butter, eggs, the rapadura sugar, vanilla, baking powder, olive oil and yogurt (I used Raglan coconut yogurt.). The tin was topped with roughly chopped salted peanuts before baking.
This wasn't bad. The salted peanuts help with crunch and consistency, the loaf itself is a bit chewy and wasn't at all sweet. But the good news is that Toby LOVED it!
And so with these initial experiences under my belt I moved onto the "piece de resistance" of my dairy free baking experience: Daniel's birthday cake. I decided to make Chelsea Winter's "Crazy Italian Chocolate Cake." It's both egg and dairy free, the icing uses coconut cream. While I briefly considered making two layers for more of a major celebration cake, I decided this was more than enough chocolate cake for all of us. For Toby's ice cream I bought Duck Island's dairy free coconut salted caramel, the rest of us enjoyed TipTop.
The cake is made with olive oil, a good cocoa, balsamic vinegar, caster sugar, flour, salt, baking soda and water or cold coffee. It can be served hot from the oven as a pudding, or cold and iced as a cake. We did the latter. As you can see below, my faith in Chelsea was well deserved, this was absolutely delicious and moist! It will now be my "go to" chocolate cake recipe. Daniel had two pieces, the girls cleaned their plates, and Toby had a bigger piece than anyone though possible. The icing was also quite good.
Thanks to Chelsea Winter, Donna Hay, PantryZen, Dante's and Duck Island for helping me through these little dairy free experiments. Off to pour myself a huge glass of milk while John butters the toast...rebalancing required.
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