Sunday we tried a no flour, no butter chocolate cake that was sweetened with dates instead of sugar. It’s amazing that you can make this kind of sweet and juicy cake without using some of the most common cake ingredients.
Chocolate, nut & date cake
Serves 6-8
500 g / 2,5 cup fresh soft medjool-like dates, pitted
250 g / 2 cups raw almonds or hazelnuts
1 block / 100 g 80% dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
6 organic eggs
1 organic orange, juice and zest
1 tsp vanilla extract or ground vanilla
3 tbsp cacao powder
4 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil, melted
1 handful fresh berries or thawed frozen
Preheat the oven to 340F/175°C. Place almonds in a food processor and pulse until you have a fine textured flour. Then add the dates and mix until well combined. Remove the knife blades and transfer the dough to a large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients an stir with a large spoon to combine. Pour the batter in a greased 8-inch / 20 cm non-stick springform pan and bake for 40-50 minutes. Let the cake cool slightly before removing the springform pan. Serve with berries.
Tip: If you do not have a high speed blender, place your pitted dates on a plate and mash with a fork until they are sticky and smooth as caramel, it’ll take a few minutes. Then add the remaining ingredients one by one and kneed it by hand until well combined.
 |
This is the start of Green Kitchen Stories.
We will publish recipes from our everyday almost vegetarian life.
And try to use a minimum of sugar, dairy …
Tuesday night we made lentil soup. Being a vegetarian for 15 years now I must have tried at least a thousand (probably more?) different veggie-recipes …
13 Comments
Hallo David and Luise.
Good luck with your new blog.
A very “tastefull” picture. I am looking forward to the recipe. Could have used it today :-)
Love Mona
looks delicious! i’m going to make it. what could be used instead of the coconut oil? thanks
Hi Azita. You can use oil that has a mild taste like almond and canola (but the best oil for heating is coconutnut oil, it has a high melting point, which mean that the heat does not ruin the oil and transform it into ‘bad fat’). You can of course also use butter. Good luck and I hope you will like it!
/Luise.
I would love to try this. What is ‘sugar-free dark chocolate’? Is it the same as unsweetened 100% chocolate or should I use 60% chocolate bar with sorbitol?
Hi pumpkinpie!
We use this sugar free one from Plamil which is sweetened with natural xylitol from birch trees sometimes we use a raw food chocolate which is sweetened with dried fruit or 80% dark chocolate with sugar. We try to avoid any kind of unatural sweeteners as sorbitol, aspartam, sukralos, sackarin, mannitol, acesulfam-K, cyklamin, ‘fake’ xylitol and others. These are all chemicals and can cause cancer and many other health problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute
Hope you find a chocolate that you like.
/Luise.
This recipe is great. I didn’t have enough dates, so I subbed prunes. Came out wonderul. Thank you.
hi, what does it mean 6 eggs (whipped together)? Is it the same method as if you were whipping egg whites into soft peaks or do you mean just mixed together as if you were going to scramble eggs? Would love to try the recipe
Looks really good! I’m gonna make this cake but one question about the dates.. did you use fresh dates or dried dates ? because the fresh ones can be more sweet tasting (and they have a different kind of texture).. I was wonder if it tastes good with dried dates.. :)
This was an awesome cake. I found it a little hard going on my food processor though, so I processed about 1/3 of dates and almonds with two of the eggs and repeated until it was all combined. I also added the zest and juice of a navel orange, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, the cocoa powder to the food pro. I used unsweetened baking chocolate and melted it with butter before adding as well. I poured the whole wonderful batter into an 8″ round, parchment-lined pan and baked for 35 minutes. I served this delicious cake with raspberry sauce (frozen raspberries heated with fresh blueberries and a little lemon juice then pureed) – all to rave reviews!
Mary Lou! Sounds so yummy, can I come over?
/Luise
Hey David and Luise! This looks so wonderful, I’m really excited about making it. I have a quick question though – what size orange should I use? Or even better, can you give any guidelines as to what volume of juice and zest are needed? Thanks so much!!
The best cake ever created! I cant believe this is a heaven!
This cake looks wonderful! I’m definitely going to bake it for my father’s birthday. He’d be so happy. And me too of course :)
4 Trackbacks
[...] Sugar Free Chocolate and Dates Cake Green Kitchen Stories [...]
[...] for vegetarian recipes on my new favourite food blog Green Kitchen Stories, I stumbled across a sugar free chocolate, nut and date cake. I was [...]
[...] for vegetarian recipes on my new favourite food blog Green Kitchen Stories, I stumbled across a sugar free chocolate, nut and date cake. I was [...]
[...] Sugar Free Chocolate and Date Cake – Green Kitchen Stories [...]