Virgin Active Wellness Wednesday: Gluten Free Everything

My mom recently gifted me with the most awesome collection of silicone bake ware. I don't normally do much baking- mostly because up until this point I haven't had any bake ware, but also because I'm allergic to wheat and I'm trying really hard to stay away from gluten. And obviously, baking treats without wheat and gluten just seem like such a mission. But I've been doing some research and as it turns out, it's actually totally do-able and surprisingly satisfying.

I've baked two delicious gluten-free cakes over the past few weeks. The first was a Lemon Drizzle Cake made with mashed potato (sounds gross, but tastes amazing) which was so delicious that we ate the whole thing before I could even snap a picture of it and the second was a gluten-free chocolate chip cake to celebrate the birth of this little guy:

Tiny baby Daniel James Fourie at 12 days old

There are literally hundreds of thousands of gluten free recipes online for everything from flapjacks to chocolate cakes and lots of them can be made without dairy or eggs too. I definitely feel SO much better when I'm eating wheat- and gluten-free and if I hadn't told Nash the cake was different he would never even have known.

Gluten- Free Lemon Drizzle Cake

The mashed potato in this recipe gives the cake the texture of a baked cheesecake. This cake is super moist and really really delicious.

Ingredients

200g of butter
200g of golden castor sugar
4 eggs
175g of ground almonds
250g of mashed potato
zest of 3 lemons
2 tsp gluten-free baking powder

For the drizzle:

2 tablespoons of icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon

What to do

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. In a food processor, beat the sugar and butter until it becomes fluffy. Slowly start to add the eggs one by one. Fold in the almonds, cold mash, lemon zest and baking powder. Bake for 40-50 minutes. Mix together the lemon juice and icing sugar. Once cool, poke small holes in the top of the cake and pour the icing sugar mixture over the top. I decorated it with paper thin slices of lemon and orange.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cake

This cake is super chocolatey! For the gluten-free cake mix, I used the one from Wellness Warehouse.

Ingredients

1 box of gluten free chocolate cake mix (I used the chocolate chip cupcake mix from Wellness)
3 1/2 teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa (I used the low-GI hot chocolate from NoMu)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 cups fat free plain yogurt
1 egg
1 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoons sugar free peanut butter/almond butter/cashew butter (you can find this at Wellness)
1/2 cup of prepared coffee
1/4 cup of water
1/3 cup of good quality chocolate chips (I used the hot chocolate chips from NoMU)
2 teaspoons good quality vanilla essence/extract (again, NoMU)

For the topping

1/2 cup of milk
1 cup of good quality chocolate chips)

What to do

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. In a big mixing bowl, mix together the cake mix, cocoa powder and sugar. Add the yogurt egg, nut butter, oil, coffee, water and vanilla. Beat until mixed well with no lumps. Add the chocolate chips and mix well. Pour the batter into a silicone cake pan and bake at 180 for 50-60 minutes.

On a low heat, melt the chocolate chips and slowly add the milk. Poke holes in the top of the cake and pour the chocolate sauce over the top.

I decorated the cake with three fortune cookies so that sweet baby James can have good fortune.

Do you have any recipes for gluten- and wheat-free baking?

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