Recipe: Tania Hubbard   Words: The Nutrition Guru   Photographs: The Nutrition Guru
We have only every blogged recipes which are our own, but today I had to make an exception. I had heard about how good Tania Hubbard’s gluten and grain free ‘Chocolate and Chia Seed Cake’ was, but just didn’t get the full grasp of this until I made it for myself from her book ‘Gluten Free Grain Free – Food We Love’.
I was actually blown awaynot only with the amazingly moist texture of the cake, but the wonderful earthly flavours and also how nutritious the cake is. If you take a look at the photographs I have taken, it looks like a fudgy chocolate cake with 20 different steps and 30 different ingredients. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Tania’s cake is in fact a one bowl wonder and basically consists of almond meal, cocoa, eggs and chia seeds. Take a peek at her website here.
Chocolate Chia Seed Cake
Recipe by Tania Hubbard
I have used a couple of different ingredients to the recipe. You will find these in bold
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons chia seeds, soaked in 1 cup of water for 15 minutes.
- ½ cup raw cocoa (or just use any cocoa)
- 125g softened butter (I used 1/2 cup Olive Oil)
- 5 medium to large eggs
- 1 cup (175g) almond meal
- 1 cup coconut palm sugar, or your choice of sugar (I used 3/4 cup raw sugar, or you could use 3/4 cup honey)
- Pinch salt
- 1 teaspoon bicarb soda
- (I also added 1/2 cup cranberries)
Note: You can substitute coconut oil or olive oil for the butter
Method
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Line a spring form cake tin with non-stick baking paper.
- Soak chia seeds (and cranberries if using), in 1 cup of water for 15 minutes, stirring regularly. The seeds will absorb all the water and swell to form a gel.
- Place all the ingredients in a bowl.
- Whisk to combine well & break up any lumps (at least 1 minute).
- Pour into lined cake tin.
- Bake in oven for 30-35 minutes or until it bounces back when pressed in middle. Please note that I cooked my cake for an additional 10 mins (so at least 40 mins).
- Let the cake cool for 5-10 minutes in the tin.
- Finish cooling on a wire cooling rack.
- Dust with cocoa when cool.
This looks wonderful and is one I shall be trying and passing onto a friend who needs gluten free cake recipes! 🙂
Oh do share!
Have done already! Given a link to your site 🙂
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Could I replace the almond meal with peanut butter “flour”? Thanks!
Hi Liz, I don’t think you could. The peanut butter flour is more to make a peanut paste with and I have a feeling that it would make the cake a goopy mess. You could certainly have a try though?
You could use plain flour, or even cornflour if you wish.
Okay, I’ll probably invest in some almond meal. Thanks!
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This was an amazing cake, easy to make and so tasty, it is my favorite now.
What size pan did you use? And would you know what 180 Celsius is in Fahrenheit? 😀 Thanks!
Hi Helen, I used a 20 cm springform cake pan. You could use bar loaf pans, square tins, it’s up to you. Set your oven at 355 degrees farenheit. You can use the calculator here in Google : https://www.google.com.au/#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=temperature+conversion&oq=temperature+conversion&gs_l=hp.3..0l4.1251.6104.0.6283.25.18.1.0.0.0.785.6118.3-1j3j6j1.11.0…0.0…1c.1.11.psy-ab.P_NhWRcgxM8&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.45645796,d.aGc&fp=fad852ead57cdcd9&biw=1525&bih=692
I am allergic to nuts. Do you know of an alternative for almond meal?
Hi Jenna, sorry for late reply. You can use equal quantities of plain or wholemeal flour or track down some coconut flour which would also work deliciously!
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What raw cocoa did you use for this recipe? Cheers, M
Any is fine M. Haven’t particularly found a favourite yet
well I made this scrumptious looking cake and it didn’t turn out that great. I forgot to get almond flour, so I used coconut flour, coconut oil, and the rest was the same. It was real dry. Im not the BEST baker but this recipe seemed fool proof.
I noticed you said to wisk the ingredients, however there was no way a wisk would work in mine. it was more of a cookie dough consistency. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Hi Stephanie, well done for being adventurous and using your own ingredients. The cake would not have turned out properly because of the coconut flour. Coconut flour is very high in fibre which soaks up any liquid, hence making the batter very dry. If wanting to use coconut flour you will need to experiment with adding more liquid to the mixture to balance the mixture out.