Gluten-free, egg-free baking: Grandma's Chocolate Cake (and it is vegan, too)

I've finally managed to adapt one of my favorite chocolate cake recipes - the only tricky thing about this is the Salba/Chia seeds I used - you can substitute ground flax meal, but it won't be quite the same. You could also just replace it with eggs, if you like eggs. Which I do, but I was baking this for a friend who isn't doing eggs right now.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free Grandma's Chocolate Cake

1/2 C Cocoa - unsweetened - alkalized or not (slightly better rise with alkalized)

1 C Water

Dry Ingredients

1/2 C Brown Rice Flour

3/4 C Buckwheat Flour

1/4 C Tapioca Flour

1/2 C Teff Flour

2 C Granulated Sugar OR Rapadura (Rapadura makes for a fudgier cake)

1/2 t Baking Powder

1 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Salt

1 t Guar Gum (Optional - your cakes will still rise without it but it does give nice lift)

Egg/Substitute

2 t ground Salba or Chia (for ground flax, increase by 1/2 t)

1/4 Cup Water

-OR-

2 ea Eggs

Wet Ingredients

1 C Buttermilk (substitute dairy-free milk OR water with 2T apple cider vinegar)

3/4 C Vegetable Oil (safflower, sunflower - you can leave this out for a more dense cake)

1 T Vanilla

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans, grease and flour cake pans. Makes about 2- 9" cakes or 24 ea cupcakes.

Combine cocoa and water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely

Place dry ingredients in bowl of mixer fitted with a paddle. Stir all ingredients together.

Combine all wet ingredients. Slowly add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, EXCLUDING cocoa (you'll add eggs or egg substitute here).

Mix for one minute, scraping down after mixing.

Slowly add cooled cocoa to batter with the mixer set to the lowest speed. Scrape down, mix for 1 more minute on medium speed.

Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake until done - approximately 20 minutes for the cupcake, 20-30 minutes for the 9" cake.

Cool completely.

 

The case does not rise to a high dome, but is rich and moist.

Ice with Grandma's Chocolate Cake icing, here:

http://cakeandcommerce.typepad.com/cake_and_commerce/2008/05/how-to-make-gra.html

The crumb is really nice: