Paleo Birthday Cake

So on Saturday it was my daughter’s first birthday.  I almost can’t believe that she is no longer classed as a baby but as a fully fledged toddler!

Every year my kids request a non Paleo birthday cake.  It is a bit of a family tradition making weird and wonderful birthday cakes, and usually it becomes more and more elaborate as the years go by.  I have made the Temple of Doom, a Minecraft landscape, Alice in Wonderland… The list is endless.   So I knew that this year I would have to make something special but really couldn’t bare to put all of the nasties in it and the results were wonderful.  Ok, so the colours weren’t as vivid but everyone agreed that a Paleo birthday cake was a much tastier cake.  In fact my other 2 now want a Paleo birthday cake every year because it tastes so much better.

I knew that this cake had to be chocolatey because my little hell beast loves chocolate.  I do let her have a nibble on my 90% chocolate, sweet potato brownies, or even my raw peppermint patty cups, and she loves it.  It really does bring a smile to her face, usually followed by the expression of the ‘Evil Monkey’ in Family Guy (finger pointing and all).  This cake had to be a big chocolatey mountain of yumminess.

I decided to make a chocolate brownie cake, with chocolate orange frosting and decorated with marzipan.  The cake is very dense and not too sweet, the frosting is just amazing (it would be perfect for piping out onto cupcakes) and the marzipan is just spot on.  In fact I still have half of the mixture left so I am looking to make Stollen.

One thing that I do have to tell you now is that the marzipan is made from ‘icing sugar’.  A company called ‘Sukrin’ make all kinds of wonderful gluten free flours and they also do sugar free sugars.  I weighed up using honey to sweeten the marzipan but I really wanted to keep it as pale as possible as I was colouring it so I used this stuff:

http://sukrin.com/en/sukrinmelis/about/

So no the marzipan isn’t strictly Paleo but for a special occasion I personally don’t think it’s too harmful.  I would like to hope that everyone is sensible enough to only consume  treats every now and then.  A Paleo treat is still a treat so please do remember that!

Makes: 12-14 slices

Preparation Time: 3 hours (when you include decorating)

Cooking Time: 1-1.5 hours

Ingredients:

For the cake batter:

6 egg whites
100g raw grass-fed butter
2 large sweet potatoes
4 tbsp coconut sugar
2/3 cup melted honey
2 tbsp coconut oil
180g cacao solids
2 cups tapioca flour
6 tbsp almond flour
2 tbsp coconut flour
1 cup cacao powder
2 tbsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the Paleo marzipan:

2 eggs
2 capfuls (approx. 1 tsp) of almond essence
200g ‘icing’ sugar (plus 50g more for dusting)
300g almond flour

2 tbsp of melted raw honey (for the ‘glue’)

For the chocolate orange Paleo frosting:

3 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp orange essence
100g 90% chocolate
1 tbsp cacao powder
Juice 1/2 orange
1 tbsp raw honey
4.5 tbsp tapioca flour

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees.
2. For the cake the easiest thing to do is to make two cakes, it certainly gets rid of all of the faffing about later on.  So if you decide to do this bake two cakes seperately (half the ingredients) or just bake a whole cake and cut in half later.
3. Place your eggs, butter and sweet potato into a food processor and blend for 5 minutes.
4. Add your coconut oil, sugar and melted honey and blend until smooth.
5. Add your cacao solids and blend until the cacao has broken up into very small pieces. (This is super noisy and you may have to clamp down your processor so it doesn’t take off!)
6. Add your flours and cacao powder and blend until a smooth cake batter.
7. Add the rest of your ingredients and blend until fully mixed.
8. Grease and line a 9″ springform cake tin. Pour in the cake batter and smooth with a spatula until even. Make a small dip or ‘well’ in the middle to ensure that the cake rises evenly.
9. Cook in the oven for 30-45 minutes or until a knife comes out hot to the touch and clean – no cake batter residue.
10. Next start on your marzipan.  Blend together all of the ingredients (except for the raw honey) in a food processor until the mixture balls up.  I think this took about 10 minutes to get a nice smooth marzipan ‘dough’
11. Remove and cover with cling film, place into an airtight container.  Set aside until later.
12. For the frosting, place all fo the ingredients except for the tapioca flour into a mixing bowl and place over a ‘Bain Marie’ (hot pan of water with a bowl sat on top).
13. Using a spatula stir the ingredients until they are smooth and have melted.
14. Place the mixture into the freezer until set.
15. Remove from the freezer and place the mixture in the food processor along with the tapioca flour. Blend until smooth.
16. Return the mixture to an airtight container and store in the fridge until needed.
17. Remove your cake from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack completely.
18. Once your cake has cooled you can now fill with the frosting. You may have to rework your frosting by giving it a quick  mix in the food processor.
19. You are now ready to decorate your cake with the marzipan. Remove your marzipan and knead on a dusted surface until pliable.
20. If you are wanting to colour your marzipan then cut into portions and knead through the colouring.
21. Brush your cake with the melted raw honey ‘glue’.
22. Roll out your marzipan on a dusted surface until about 5mm thick. Place over the cake, smooth down and cut off any overhang.
23. If you are putting on any shapes of marzipan just ensure that you cover the underside with the raw melted honey to keep them stuck on.
24. And that’s it! You have a big hefty and yummy birthday cake to enjoy!