Since I was about 7 or 8, my Mum has had food sensitivities to wheat and dairy. This was over 20 years ago, before being gluten-free and drinking soy or almond milk were “mainstream” like they are today, and food choices back then for pretty much everything were extremely limited. At some point, we started to refer to anything wheat-free and dairy-free as a “why bother?” because most often, without both wheat and dairy, whatever you were eating was barely worth it – especially when it came to dessert.

However, my Mum is a great cook and our family still ate incredibly well – we got used to mashed potatoes made with dairy-free margarine and soy milk and started experimenting with different kinds of flour and starches – and today there are tons of really quite delicious options for wheat-free and dairy-free foods all over the place. Being the obsessive baker that I am, I still keep my eyes open for wheat-free baked goods, so when a former boss of mine sent me a recipe clipped from a newspaper for a chocolate cake made with quinoa, I filed it away in the “Desserts Mum Can Eat” corner of my brain. Recently I saw a similar (perhaps the same?) quinoa cake made by Christina, and it looked so good and fudgy that I was inspired to try it. My Mum recently had a milestone birthday and we got together as a family in Vancouver to celebrate, so I had a good reason to finally bake this cake!

I traveled to Vancouver as a foot passenger on the ferry with my parents, so I had to figure out how to transport the cake for several hours without refrigeration and without my Mum knowing. I brought the cake over in pieces in my backpack – the baked cake layers stacked between cake boards and placed in a tin for protection, the frosting in an insulated lunch bag with some ice packs – and assembled it in my Aunt and Uncle’s kitchen while my Mum was enjoying a beer poolside. My backpack was heavy, but it was worth the surprise!

And it was a really good cake! Chocolaty, fudgy, not too sweet. The frosting is the real trickster though: this is a dairy-free cream cheese buttercream frosting, the secret ingredient being… (wait for it…) tofu! In the years since my Mum first stopped eating dairy, lots of mimic “dairy products” have come out, one being tofu cream cheese – which actually tastes and acts remarkably like regular cream cheese. The brand I used is Tofutti “Better Than Cream Cheese” and I think it’s fairly widely available.

Because a small amount is OK for my Mum, I admit that I did add a little bit of real butter to the frosting, but you’d never guess that it was mostly non-dairy, other than the fact that I just spent the entire previous paragraph telling you so. And I know I’ve often said how much I dislike confectioner’s sugar frostings, but this one was actually really good: sweet but not too sweet, a little bit tangy, very fluffy, and it went well with the bittersweet chocolate cake.

Regardless of whether or not you can eat wheat and dairy, this is definitely a cake that you should bother to make!

Happy Birthday Mum! xoxo

{Wheat and Dairy-Free} Chocolate Quinoa Cake with {Dairy-Free} Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes one 2-layer, 8-inch round cake, which served 12 people. A fairly powerful food processor or high powered blender is required for the cake. Quinoa doesn’t contain any gluten, so this cake is also suitable for those who are gluten-free, not just wheat-free.

Chocolate Quinoa Cake

Adapted from De La Casa and Love and Laundry.

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Grease two 8″ round cake pans with coconut oil and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a medium covered saucepan, bring 2/3 cup uncooked quinoa and 1 1/3 cup water to a boil over high heat. Turn the heat to the lowest setting and simmer, covered, until all the water is absorbed and the quinoa is cooked. Fluff the cooked quinoa with a fork and let it cool completely.

Place the cooled, cooked quinoa in the bowl of a food processor/blender, along with:

1/3 cup soy, rice, or almond milk

4 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup coconut oil, just barely heated until liquid

Blend for several minutes, scraping down the sides and bottom a few times, until as smooth as possible (it will look kind of like hummus).

Add:

1 1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Blend again, making sure to scrape down the sides and bottom, until the batter is uniformly chocolatey and very very smooth.

Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans and spread it out level. Bake in the preheated 350˚F oven for 30 – 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out with a few moist crumbs on it. The middle of the cakes will puff up a bit but will settle down flat once they cool. Turn out the cakes onto a rack, peel off the parchment paper, and let cool completely.

Dairy-Free Cream Cheese Frosting

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, cream on medium-high speed for several minutes until very light and fluffy:

8 oz / 1 cup dairy-free tofu cream cheese, softened (such as Tofutti “Better Than Cream Cheese”)

8 oz /1 cup dairy-free margarine, softened (or 4 oz / 1/2 cup each margarine and butter, if you’re cheating like I did)

It’s very important that both the cream cheese and margarine are soft enough to spread before you cream them together, otherwise they won’t whip up and get light and fluffy. Take the time to 1) soften them properly and 2) beat the tar out of them once softened, and you will end up with a very light and delicious frosting. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl occasionally too, to make sure everything is evenly whipped.

Once the cream cheese/margarine mixture is very light and creamy, gradually add in:

3 cups icing sugar, sifted

Add 1 tsp vanilla extract and a pinch of salt and beat again for several minutes until it forms a smooth, creamy, and light buttercream that will easily hold medium-stiff peaks.

I got a bit self-conscious and didn’t take any pictures while I was assembling the cake, but it’s pretty straight-forward: place one cooled layer on a serving platter, spread it with a thick layer of frosting, top it with the second layer of cake, and spread it with more frosting. I had about a cup of frosting left over, and if you wanted to, you could also frost the sides (just use a bit less in between the layers, to make sure you have enough frosting), but I liked seeing the contrast between the cake and frosting. Top the cake with berries or fresh fruit and serve at room temperature – it makes serving the cake kind of messy, but the texture of gooey frosting and slightly dense, fudgy cake is delicious.