from my old baking blog:

Not a perfect recipe yet, still working on it, but getting close and the kids scarfed it up, especially drizzled with some non-dairy chocolate syrup.

cooking spray, oil or shortening for greasing pan
alternative flour for flouring pan (I used rice flour)
1 cup superfine sugar (or regular sugar, whirled in a blender)
115 grams Spectrum Organics Shortening (no trans-fats, yay!)
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Wheat-Free Biscuit and Baking Mix
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup rice milk
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed)

Prepare 9 in x 2 in cake pan — grease, then cover bottom with cut-to-fit parchment, then grease again, then flour. Tap off excess flour and keep pan in refrigerator until ready to use. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream sugar and shortening in mixer bowl, about 30 seconds. Add flour, applesauce, vanilla extract, rice milk, and cocoa powder. Continue beating until combined well, about 3 minutes. Bake for about 40-45 minutes in the middle of the oven. Test cake for doneness using a skewer or cake tester — it should come out clean. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack 10 minutes. Take knife and carefully slide it around pan to loosen cake. Turn over gently to release cake then turn over again onto plate and set aside to cool.

Changes I’m thinking of making:

try different kinds / a combination of different flours
try it “marbled” — half of the batter mixed with melted non-dairy dark chocolate, then swirled together in the pan before baking.
we haven’t tried it frosted, so that’s also on the list.

The cake should be moister and denser than a regular cake, but that’s okay, my kids thought it was good, so yours might like it too. It should not be “wet” though. I made this twice in November, but lost the pics when our desktop crashed.

Since then, I’ve made this cake 3 more times. I’ve learned to make my own cake mix so now instead of using Bob’s Red Mill, I’ve come up with the following formula:

1 cup rice flour
1 cup fava and garbanzo bean flour (I can make the garbanzo bean flour myself, but I haven’t found dried fava beans that I can grind)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

I would make a large batch of this and use it as needed.

In November of this year I also tried varying the spices to make my 9-yo’s birthday cake. Earlier in the month I had made a buttermilk spice layer cake for a friend, so I used the same spices for this and it came out very well. (I’ll blog about that later.)

We also used this for making cupcakes and they turned out well also. I haven’t solved the crust problem — but the inside is so regular-cake-like that an easy solution would be just to lop off the top 1/4 inch or so. I have NOT tried making it into a layered cake. That should be easy enough to do, though the cake may need to be chilled before slicing, frosted, THEN brought to room temp (or cool) before serving.

I’m planning to try it out again sometime in the next two weeks…. maybe layered, with raspberry filling, and a “ganache” of dark chocolate (dairy free) melted in soymilk, and a frosting made with Smart Balance and confectioner’s sugar. Or maybe a Vegenaise-dark chocolate combination. We’ll see.