Recipe: Let's eat cake! — My Multiple Sclerosis Journey

It’s been a while since I’ve done a recipe post, or any post at all. Part of winter, particularly February, has this “just get through it” feeling to it and I’ve been traveling a bit.

But I’m here to tell you I’ve found the holy grail of healthy inspiration and I literally haven’t put down my fork since.

Gluten-free foods can sometimes, if not most times, be a bit boring, challenging or too different to remind you of their spongy gluten counterparts. I’ve found some good recipes, have several of my favorite brand of things, or had amazing GF things while traveling (like pizza in Atlanta recently, swoon), but those are often done by people who’s full-time job it is to make food for a living or even make gluten free food.

Plus, I’m kind of a renegade in the kitchen. I never measure anything and will usually swap out ingredient X for Y if Y is healthier and I have it on hand. That means, sometimes gluten free baking and I don’t get along. Gluten-free baking likes you to measure things. It likes you to follow the rules as they lay out in the recipe. A recipe with many substitutions can sometimes fail at best at mimicking their gluten counterparts or become hot, flaming dumpster fires that I still eat anyways, because good-quality eggs at my corner store are $10 right now and I refuse to waste food that costs an arm and a leg.

So, I post this recipe with the disclosure that I failed a full FIVE times before arriving at success. My wonderful lawyer-turned-financial-consultant friend who bakes (ridiculously professional looking stuff) on the side made me this for my birthday at my request along with the super out-of-left-field frosting I made up myself (basil chamomile lemon). And guess what? It was SO freaking delicious, eating it was like a religious experience that brought tears to my eyes.

After finishing a cake like that…what do you do? Bake another one, obviously. And I did, promptly. And I failed. Then I failed again. Then I went out and bought the same pans she had. Fail. Bought new baking powder in case that was the issue. Fail. Then I borrowed her actual food processor in case my Vitamix was the issue. Fail. I failed a full five times before I called her in frustration and asked her to babysit me while I did it (while using her food processor) to figure out what I was doing wrong.

I learned it turns out you have to follow directions and the reason for the mishap is you under no circumstances can you substitute maple syrup for granular sugar in this recipe. I don’t cook with sugar, and rarely even maple syrup, but when I do I always sub maple syrup. I hadn’t thought anything of it, because I’ve done it 50 other times for other things before and those things turned out fine.

Well you can’t with this and I’ve gotten over it because it’s only ¼ cup, which is minimal, and with it, you get success. This cake, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, sounds weird. Sounds like in no way would it ever (1) work and surely not (2) taste good, and if you clear those two hurdles, there’s no way it will be (3) spongey and cake-like as if it had gluten in it. And those assumptions are wrong. It is quite possibly the cake-y-iest cake that ever caked. Its mind blowing. It was keeping me up at night dreaming of when I could have it again.

Here is the vanilla version (which is amazeballs) from Hayl’s Kitchen | Flourless White Bean Vanilla Cake. Try it. It’s amazing.

One day, after finally getting the recipe down (via following exact directions, ingredients and measuring, shocker), I was eating my vanilla cake and had a thought. Carrot cake is my favorite and while I have a great vegan gluten free carrot cake I love, it’s not grain free and still uses GF flour, and I’ll always opt for grain free over gluten free if it tastes the same (or better). Could this be adapted to carrot cake? An hour later I had my answer…IT CAN. It can also be adapted for chocolate, which I’ve done and likely many other iterations that I’ll try in the future.

But for now, here is my carrot cake adaptation from the recipe above:

Hayl’s Kitchen | Flourless White Bean Vanilla Cake recipe:

1 can White Kidney Beans/Cannellini Beans, drained and rinsed

3 Tbsp Coconut Oil, Melted

3 Eggs, Room Temperature

1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract (I use paste, which is more expensive, but I like better)

1½ tsp Baking Powder

¼ cup sugar, (or Stevia Sweetener with whatever the brand's Conversion Chart) – I don’t use fake sweeteners at all, so opted for sugar

And add:

Up to 1 cup shredded carrots (I used 3 small organic carrots for mine)

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Few dashes of nutmeg

A dash of clove

A generous handful of almonds, ground (almond meal or whip up sliced to ground in your coffee grinder) OR 1/2 cup almond flour

A generous handful of walnuts, chopped

I did the wet ingredients first together, blending the beans thoroughly in the food processor for about 20 seconds until all major lumps were gone, then added the vanilla and then the tablespoons of coconut oil, one at a time while the food processor was running, followed by the eggs one at a time.

I added that mixture to the dry ingredients of spices, walnuts, baking powder and sugar, along with the carrots. Put that in an 8-inch cake pan and baked for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.

For frosting I use Kite Hill’s Dairy Free Plain Cream Cheese made with Almond Milk. It’s the only brand that actually tastes somewhat like cream cheese, has the same consistency and is not packed full of random food starches and hard to pronounce things (almond milk and enzymes are on the ingredient list). I also add more vanilla, cinnamon and walnuts to the frosting and blend.

It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t taste like beans. This cake has NO business being this good, but it is. Happy baking!

Dry ingredients

Spices, carrots, ground almonds, baking powder and sugar

Wet ingredients

Beans + vanilla + coconut oil and eventually eggs

Ready for the oven

8 inch pan | 350 degrees F | 35 minutes

Out of the oven and ready to cool down! — Nom nom nom

I let mine cool for about a half hour before slicing