Healthy Sticky Chocolate Fudge Cake (like, super fudgy no joke) {Gluten, Dairy + Grain Free}

What is it with me and the loaf cakes at the moment? I have no idea why I keep making them.

Kathryn tweeted that she thinks cake just tastes better when it’s loaf shaped, after making a super luscious Lemony Yoghurt Cake

and I think I agree.

I don’t have enough loaf cakes on here anyway, so it’s better that I just make loads while I’m on a roll.

This chocolatey loaf cake was made after I decided that I a) needed chocolate. It was a major craving (that’s why this is triple chocolate :/) but b) didn’t want to feel crap after eating it (and actually wanted it to be filling)

I kind of based this on a gluten free brownie recipe – so you can tell how sticky this is – but I didn’t want to use ground almonds. In the end I used one of my recent ingredients faves – flax seeds! (you may have caught onto the fact that I keep putting oat flour and flax seeds into a lot of stuff. You can’t stop me. I can’t stop me.) They have super binding powers so that makes up for the lack of gluten. They also have all them healthy oils (holla at the omega-3s!) so this is still rich.

I had a bunch of squash puree leftover from making some caramel with a butternut squash (a la Bon Appetit, here) so I used that to make it dense and moist.

Yeah, butternut squash caramel. It’s insane. I’m not even giving a recipe because I just used the recipe linked above but subbing a butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes.

You roast/steam the squash in some water for an hour, then squeeze all the liquid out and cook that liquid down. The natural sugars make it thicken up and you get about 1/4 cup of kind of earthy, tangy (think sour cream caramel) syrup that tastes a bit like pumpkin pie. Needless to say I ate it with a slice of this cake for dessert.

Then I took all the leftover squash fiber and blended in about 1 cup of water, so I ended up with 2 cups of puree as well!

There’s a gooey chocolate glaze on top of the cake too cos – here’s the thing- when you bake some chocolate things with pumpkin in them, they get this really weird matt dark layer on top. You know what I’m talking about?

It aint appealing for ye eyes, so the glaze sorted that out. And it added extra stickyness so nobody complained. Oh oh, and I blended down demerara sugar to make powdered raw sugar. It’s SO GOOD in chocolate frosting because it has that slight molasses flavour to it. Mmm.

Okay, so enhoy the cake.

Sorry for veeeeery minimalistic styling/ using the same background for ages / grain (let’s just pretend that was on purpose and call it arty).

We’ll end with a photo (well a photo of a photo) of baby me – lookin like the most guilty person in the world – eating cake frosting off a spoon to make up for it.

Ciao!

Notes

- I made raw powdered sugar by grinding demerara sugar in a blender until fine.

- You can use another liquid sweetener like maple or agave syrup, but you may need to add 1 tbsp more/less as they are more/less sweet than honey

- I used butternut squash puree

- You can use other nut butters, seed butters or melted coconut oil in place of the cashew butter.
- I added a small squeeze of lemon juice because I don’t like the aftertaste of baking soda that can sometimes be left, but I think I’m super sensitive to it so you can probably just leave the lemon juice out and it’ll be fine.

-Update: Commenter Maddie says that she replaced the egg with a chia egg (1 tbsp chia seeds 3 tbsp water) and it worked well!

Print Healthy Sticky Chocolate Fudge Cake {Gluten, Dairy Grain Free}
1/2 cup ground flaxseed 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1 tsp baking soda pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla 6 tbsp honey 1 egg (see notes) 1/2 cup 2 tbsp pumpkin/squash puree 2 tbsp cashew butter 1/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
Glaze: 2 heaped tsp of powdered raw sugar (see notes) (or powdered sugar) 1 tsp cocoa powder almond milk

Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C)

Stir together the flax, cocoa, soda and salt in a bowl.

In a jug, whisk together the vanilla, honey, egg, pumpkin and cashew butter with a fork. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix until well combined.

Pour into a greased, lined 1lb loaf pan (line it with a bit of an overhang so you can lift the cake out easily). Scatter over the chocolate chips and push them into the batter. Bake for 40-50 minutes until the cake doesn't wobble when you shake the pan (the skewer test doesn't really work with this).

Stir together the powdered raw sugar and cocoa powder, then stir in almond milk until you get quite a thick glaze (just start with a teaspoon first and add more as needed). Pour over the hot cake and spread out evenly using the back of a spoon.

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