Chocolate avocado cake (vegan & gluten free)

Free from dairy, eggs, soy, wheat | gluten free | vegan

Great for toddlers & older kids

I’ve never been particularly good at making cakes, so I’ve struggled with the added complication of making free from cakes for my kids. Party food for children with CMPA and other food allergies can be challenging, and birthday cakes in particular are difficult because it’s all mixed up with the emotions of wanting them to have the same as other children – so, I find myself getting unreasonably stressed about it.

For my son’s second birthday I planned ahead early and sought ideas from the knowledgeable mothers on various online allergy forums I belong to. I really do think these forums are brilliant, people are just so willing to share tips and advice. I was promised that this chocolate avocado cake was pretty easy to get right and is also very tasty! Luckily, they were right, it’s got a delicious fudgy texture and earned a thumbs up all round. The recipe didn’t have lots of complicated steps, it’s pretty much just whizzed up in a food processor.

The cake is gluten free, but if you don’t need that then normal plain flour is fine.

Ingredients and method:

If you are new to vegan baking, I recommend you check out my post on tips for getting started with vegan baking. It will highly increase your chances of success!

For the cake I followed a BBC good food recipe, and just had to substitute the soya milk with unsweetened almond milk (oat milk would also work fine to keep it nut free).

Instead of the frosting suggested in the recipe I decided to do a buttercream icing:

The recipe I used was as follows:

• 140g/5oz stork baking block, slightly softened
• 280g/10oz icing sugar
• 40g pure cacao powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-2 tbsp almond or oat milk

Whisk the Stork in a large bowl until soft. Stir in half of the icing sugar and whisk until smooth.

Add the remaining icing sugar and the cacao powder, one tablespoon of the almond/oat milk and the vanilla extract, then beat the mixture until creamy and smooth. Beat in the remaining milk, if necessary, to loosen the mixture.

I made the cake the day before the party, then on the morning I made up the buttercream and assembled the cake, with a thin layer of buttercream in the middle and a thicker layer on the top. One word of warning here – the cakes are a bit delicate, so be gentle when you are moving them and don’t spread the icing too vigorously.

I decorated the cake with raspberries and strawberries, which worked really well with the buttercream. Plus my kids are mad about raspberries! This cake fed 13 adults and 2 hungry toddlers.

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