Paleo Meal Monday-Birthday Edition!

As promised, here is the recipe for the cake and ice cream I created. I used a couple of base recipes and tweaked to my liking and came up with a pretty delicious creation! Now, this is not a totally Paleo recipe, but I’ve had no sugar in months, so I splurged with some honey and Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. I also have been dairy-free and used butter. You know what? I’m cool with it. It’s my birthday!

Grain-Free Chocolate Cake Recipe

adapted from Primal Palate

• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup softened raw butter (if you can’t get it, use organic butter)
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips, melted
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp aluminum-free baking powder
• 1/8 tsp xantham gum (acts like gluten in gluten-free recipes)

Mix first five ingredients with a hand mixer. Mix last five ingredients together, and add to wet and mix with mixer. Grease a springform pan, and pour in batter. It is sticky, so you will have to work to get the batter evenly distributed in the pan. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool, and add icing.

Icing

adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie

• 1 can full-fat canned coconut milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp honey

Open can of coconut milk and refrigerate overnight. Be careful not to mix the can before opening. When you are ready to make the icing, pour off the coconut water (you can drink it!) and pour the hardened coconut milk in a bowl and whip with a hand mixer, adding in vanilla and honey. It will thicken and harden a bit once refrigerated. You can ice the cake immediately, and it will firm up once you refrigerate the cake.

Topping

• 1/4 cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips
• 1 tbsp palm shortening

Melt ingredients together in a double boiler. A double boiler means that you have a pan of boiling water and place a bowl over the top with the ingredients in it to melt them. Drizzle over the cake once the icing has chilled and hardened.

Ice Cream

adapted from Paleo Effect 

• 1 can full fat coconut milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp honey, or as much as you want! This is NOT a very sweet recipe, FYI…

Bring milk up to medium high heat, and add vanilla. Whisk eggs in a bowl. Take coconut milk off of heat, and VERY SLOWLY add a small amount of milk to the eggs while beating them with a hand mixer, to bring the eggs up to the temperature of the milk WITHOUT COOKING THEM! You don’t want scrambled eggs here…

Once eggs and milk are incorporated, mix in honey. Refrigerate until cooled, then add to your ice cream maker. I must admit, it didn’t have a whole lot of flavor, but I didn’t have all of the ingredients the recipe called for. I think using real vanilla bean would have added a nice flavor rather than using the vanilla extract. I thought it was tasty with the cake, but my guests found it didn’t have much flavor and tasted like creamed ice. Don’t worry, I WILL try again very soon.

I thought the cake was DELICIOUS. My kids gobbled it up and asked for more. My non-paleo guests thought it was okay, but when you are used to eating sugar, non-sugary foods probably taste bland. I thought it was amazing because my palate is not used to sugar at all.

We ate the ice cream immediately, and I forgot to take a picture of it. Also, we ate the cake right after I drizzled it with the chocolate and I was so excited to eat it I forgot the photos of the whole cake. Oops! Sometimes it is nice to do what the bag of chocolate chips say and Enjoy Life!!!

I got a thumbs up! Woo hoo!

Shared with My Favorite Finds, Time-Warp Wife,  Organizing Home Life, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Women Living Well, Whimsy Wednesdays, Creative @ Home Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, and My Crowded Kitchen.