For my son’s birthday party last year, it was really important to me that we only served food he was able to eat. I keep his allergens in the house and eat them regularly – I know a lot of people choose to remove them, and I think whatever works for your family is best. For us, I feel it will help teach my son how to recognize and be safe around his allergens while being able to enjoy his own safe foods. However, I want his birthdays to be absolutely fun and carefree.
I found this dairy and egg free chocolate cake, modified it a bit to fit our family’s gluten free needs, and it turned out AMAZING! I got so many compliments on it and disbelief it was vegan and gluten free – my sister in law even said, “I’ll be honest, that chocolate cake you made was one of the best cakes I’ve ever had.” Some people ate multiple servings and requested the recipe.
Anyway, all this to say, sometimes people think foods modified to be allergen friendly aren’t as good, but they can be just as good or even better with the right recipe! It may take a little more effort to make something that’s safe for everyone, but it’s so worth it for people with allergies to feel loved and included! I love this cake recipe so much, I’ve made it for my own birthday as well.
What Makes This Recipe So Great
- Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free: This cake uses silken tofu instead of eggs and dairy, and has the most decadent flavor and perfect texture!
- Easy To Make: It doesn’t require anything fancy, just mix it together and bake it!
- It’s Delicious: I had someone tell me they had a hard time believing it was possible to make a good vegan cream cheese frosting, but this frosting for this cake is so good it’s hard to stop eating it!
Ingredients
- Dairy free milk – Any dairy free milk should work great!
- White Vinegar – This is used to make your butter milk
- Gluten free flour – If you would rather, you can use normal white flour.
- Cocoa powder – It is a chocolate cake
- Dairy free butter – You can use normal butter if you don’t have a dairy issue.
- Sugar – This is a recipe I don’t substitute the sugar out for other less processed sugars
- Silken tofu – I imagine egg would work as the tofu is an egg substitute, but I haven’t experimented with it.
- Dairy free cream cheese – I like to use Daiya brand.
Some Recipe Tips
You can make the cake ahead and freeze it to frost later. You can even freeze a bunch of cupcakes to have on hand for events where you may need to bring your own allergen friendly dessert.
To make cupcakes, it will bake 24 cupcakes at 350 degrees for 17 – 20 minutes instead.
This Recipe Includes A Top 10 Allergen:
Vegan Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 cup dairy free milk
- 1 tbsp white vinegar for the buttermilk
- 2 1/4 cups gluten free flour
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup dairy free butter
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup silken tofu
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- 1 /2 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup allergen friendly chocolate chips
Dairy Free Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1/2 cup dairy free butter
- 3/4 cup dairy free cream cheese
- 1 1/4 tsp vanilla
- 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F & line 2 round cake pans with parchment paper
- Combine the dairy free milk with 1 tbsp vinegar, stir and set aside to form buttermilk.
- In a medium bowl, combine gluten free flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together and set aside.
- In a larger bowl, cream together your butter and sugar.
- Add buttermilk, tofu, vinegar, and vanilla to the butter and sugar and use a hand mixer to combine.
- Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet mixture and use hand mixer to combine.
- Fold in your chocolate chips.
- Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans and bake for 30 - 35 minutes.
- Allow to cool completely before removing from the pans
Frosting
- Combine all the ingredients besides the sugar in a bowl with a hand mixer.
- Slowly add in the sugar until all is combined into your frosting.
- Chill in fridge until ready to frost the cake.
