Pecan and Chocolate Fudge Ring – gluten free/ paleo and easily dairy free
Original wheat recipe came from one of my English cookbooks, then I adapted it to gluten free, and dairy free, less sugar. Original recipe, the fudge sauce hardened to a crunchy crust when cool. Everyone likes it. Different proportions and no corn syrup, fudge sauce is soft chewy. But I found the more I made it , the more sauce varied. I think it's a combination of oven, size of pan used, cooking time, different chocolate chips – some don't melt the same way with ingredient changes. They all vanished, even with wheat eaters. Sauce around outside is very toffeeish chewy almost hard, inside is soft and creamy. You must turn it out of pan within a few minutes of removing from oven, or sauce hardens like caramel and won't turn out. Original recipe used ring/tube pan. I find too much sauce stays behind in tube or bundt pan. I use an 8” cake pan or my 9+1'2 “ spring form.
One of my September 2016 recipes for Beyond Celiac - originally National Foundation for Celiac Awareness.
Fudge Sauce
3 tbsp butter or coconut oil. With coconut oil, sauce on its own is boring, but tasty eaten with cake.
1/2 c (3 oz, 84g) light brown (soft brown) sugar, perhaps less. I do find it a bit sweet, but everyone else is happy.
2 tbsp (30 ml) milk
1 tbsp (15 ml) unsweetened cocoa, regular Hershey's
¼ c, (1+1/2 oz, 40g) gf semi sweet chocolate chips
½ c finely chopped pecans.
Cake – 9+1/2 “ springform makes about a 1” deep cake, but rich.
6 tbsp (3 oz, 84g) very soft butter or coconut oil
1+1/2 c ( 6 oz, 180g) almond flour – almonds ground without skin
3/4 c, (6 oz, 180 g) sugar
1 Tbsp (15 ml) gf vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1 tsp (5 ml) gf baking powder
no xanthan gum needed
3 eggs
Photo from WMUR
1. preheat oven to 350*. Lightly grease and bottom line 8” or 9+1/2 “ pan /springform. I used 10” bundt pan that was almost smooth and sauce still stuck, but cake cooked quicker and was deeper. You do need a cake pan that will allow cake to be turned out.
2. Fudge Sauce
Place the butter or coconut oil, sugar, milk and cocoa in a small pan and heat gently while butter and
sugar melt without burning and mix is smooth.
3. Stir in chocolate chips and stir until melted, this does take some time. I prefer not to heat the sauce more to melt chocolate. Stir in chopped nuts. Pour sauce into bottom of pan and they say set aside to cool. You really can't put metal pan with almost boiling sauce in fridge. That's another reason I don't heat sauce more to melt chocolate as it could also melt cake batter.
4. Place all the cake ingredients in a 4 cup, 1 litre bowl and beat for 1-2 minutes until smooth and creamy.
5. Carefully spoon cake mixture over sauce. Don't pour cake mix onto sauce as it will squish it away from middle of pan. It will seem like not enough batter.
6. Bake in preheated over for about 30 minutes until cake has risen, softly firm, is light golden brown and sauce can be showing around edges. I have cooked it for almost 50 minutes in different pans. Keep checking after 30 minutes. If you use almond meal (almonds ground with skin still on) then cake will be darker.
7. Remove from oven, cool in pan for about 3 minutes, then turn out onto cake serving plate. If you leave cake in pan, as sauce cools it will set hard.
