I’ve never been one to knock back a chocolate sponge cake with cream and strawberry jam or a black forest cake or a chocolate mud cake. How could I somehow incorporate all three but without all of the gluten, sugar, butter, flower, processed chocolate, dairy and other weight gaining nasties of traditional chocolate cream cake?

This layered chocolate cake uses blended desiccated coconut flour, sunflower flour and flaxseeds instead of traditional flour. For a sweetener I’ve used stevia banana and dates. Butter has been replaced with coconut oil and I’ve used 70% dark chocolate and raw cacoa powder instead of the low quality dairy milk chocolate.

In order to replace the whipped cream I have used coconut cream and sweetened it with stevia and vanilla essence. Strawberry jam has been replaced with real strawberries.

The method goes into a bit of detail as making this cake can go south quickly if you’re not careful

Serves: 6-8
Total time: Approx 1 hour

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of sunflower flour or almond meal
2 tbs of flaxseed meal
1 cup of finely blended desiccated coconut or coconut flour
2 tbs of coconut oil
1 egg whisked
1 banana mashed
10 dates finely chopped and blended
2 tsp of raw cacoa powder
6 squares of melted dark chocolate (70% or better)
2 270ml cans of coconut milk
1 punnet of strawberries or any other berry you prefer
4-5 stevia tabs
1-2 tsp of natural vanilla essence
2 tsp of baking soda
Cinnamon
Boiling water

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180dg
Boil kettle
Crack 1 egg into a bowl and whisk
Add one banana to bowl and mash
Add flaxseed meal and baking soda
Blend sunflower seeds into flour and add to bowl
Blend desiccated coconut into flour and add to bowl
Finely chop dates and add to blender with a dash of boiling water, once blended add to bowl
Place dark chocolate and coconut oil in a small bowl and microwave for approx 1 minute or until melted then add to bowl
Add 2 stevia tabs, 1 tsp of vanilla essence and cinnamon to taste. Add extra if mixture is bitter
Stir well
Line a cake tin with baking paper and add mixture. Make sure mixture is smoothed out and even
Place in oven for 20 minutes or until cooked through

For ‘cream’ filling
Complete this step while mixture is in oven
Spoon the hardened coconut milk out of can into a bowl
Add 2 tabs of stevia and 1 tsp of vanilla essence. If mixture is not sweet enough add extra stevia or vanilla essence
Stir well and refrigerate

Putting it together
When cake is cooked, remove from oven and place on a wire rack and allow to cool.  When cool, slice through the cake horizontally. Do this step carefully as you don’t want the cake to crack

Use a spatula to remove the top layer then place both layers on a wire rack. If the cake is still warm in the middle allow to cool further.

Once cool, remove coconut mixture from fridge and spread onto the top of both layers.

Cover the coconut mixture with thinly sliced strawberries or any other berry you like.

With a spatula place one layer on top of the other.

Refrigerate until ready to serve

Important note: If the cake is still warm, the coconut mixture will run.  Make sure the cake is cool and the coconut mixture has been refrigerated, otherwise the coconut cream will turn into coconut milk and will be everywhere.