Raspberry Lemon Vanilla Cake: Gluten-Free, Vegan, Sugar-Free & Soy-Free

My Life In The Kitchen

I've always been a cook! My brother and I would wake up after hours and play restaurant in our kitchen when everyone else in the house was asleep. I was nine and he was four, I would legit cook the best creamy tomato soup (which is what he always ordered at our restaurant) I love cooking as much as I love swimming, yoga and dancing. Cooking is like art to me, it can be highly creative and fun. I can just craft something yummy with whatever ingredients I have available on the fly without a recipe.

Want Not Bake Not

Baking on the other hand I always avoided like the plague, it was messy, specific, rigid and you needed to adhere to a formula or recipe which I did not care for. It reminded me of my relationship to math, I only do it if absolutely necessary, which in my life was usually never.

At some point during my raw vegan phase of life, I got into No-Bake baking. Such as raw cheesecakes, chocolate fudges, almond butter bars and berry and pomegranate squares etc... these required mostly a Vitamix, a pan and a fridge and very little else.

A Hard Diagnosis That Changed My Life & Food

Fast-forward years later, I'm diagnosed with Hashimotos, a thyroid disorder which typically happens from years of eating foods one is unaware that they are sensitive to. These foods start to cause inflammation in the intestinal wall, eventually causing thinning and permeability of its lining.

This permeability allows molecules to escape into the blood stream that shouldn't normally do so. Unfortunately these molecules on the loose create a slew of problems. One's body starts to create antibodies towards many foods and even hormones, and a crazy domino affect of health problems arise. In light of this diagnoses, I spent years trying to figure out what to do about it. I was already a nutritionist and a yoga teacher, I already ate healthy and had previously lost 145 lbs. I lost the weight few years prior to my diagnoses by implementing a super healthy lifestyle.

I had sought many modalities of education and taught myself much about how my emotional and mental states played huge roles in my relationship to my body, food and movement. Yet now, I had to dig deeper into how to use nutrition and powerful lifestyle tools to heal my body from this hypo/hyper-thyroidsism.

The Quest For Healing: Using Food As Medicine

I experimented extensively and diligently tried to learn everything I could for years and learned to be very mindful of what I eat. I had to learn how to cook in a very different way. Now, being a foodie, I wasn't ready to sacrifice taste or flavor at all, so I developed many cool tricks and recipes that mimic my favorite foods or were new delicious creations. No matter what there were specific foods I had to avoid to keep my Hashimoto disease in balance, these were:

Gluten Dairy Soy

Eggs Cruciferous vegetables

Nightshades

Sugar

Processed foods of all kinds

So I used my creative cooking as a way to accept and love this new challenge called Hashimoto's. I loved my new creations and posted most of them on my personal Instagram account. I generally still kept baking to a minimum, easy stuff like Cookies, Berry Crisp, Flat Bread/Pizza Dough, No-Bake Berry Cheese Cake, No-Bake Chocolate Almond Butter Fudge, etc...

Fast-Forward To The Present Day... Back To Baking

This year for my son's birthday party, my son surprised me by insisting that I had to BAKE. HIM. A. CAKE. "That's what I want, mommy!"

"Woah! Hold up! You mean like a raw cheese cake, right? Cause I got that, in the bag!"

"No Mommy I want a REAL CAKE!"

"Oh No! Mommy doesn't bake cake, let alone gluten, dairy, soy, egg, sugar free cake...." PANIC MODE! So I called around to see if any of the many awesome allergen friendly bakers we have here in North County San Diego area, were capable of meeting the challenge. It was basically going to cost me $130 dollars! MORE PANICKING!

Back to the Allergen-Free Drawing Board...

Now I decided to spend the next week in the kitchen-lab trying to figure out this allergen free baking thing. It had to be delicious, it had to be clean-eating and allergen friendly. So after a few experiments, we succeeded! I had officially baked a gluten/dairy/soy/sugar/egg-free vegan & paleo cake that was moist, sweet, delicious & just as satisfying as any cake, if not more!

It was a complete hit at the birthday party and in less than 5 mins, leaving everyone stunned that what they just had was indeed free of all those things yet so delicious.

This moist vanilla almond cake with raspberry-lemon compote, and vanilla-lemon icing was a huge hit! It was so popular that it was requested many times in the house after that day. This gave me plenty of practice and time to distill the recipe down to a real science.

The second time I made it was completely gone within 12 hours. Mind you there are 2 small children and 3 adults in the house & I only had a tiny piece of it. I love that my son pushed me out of my cook-only identity comfort zone and insisted I make him a cake. Here's to more baking adventures! I hope you enjoy this as much as everyone else!

Finally, How To Actually Make This Cake

Ingredients:

Wet Ingredients:

2 1/2 Cup Dairy-Free Milk (Ripple Unsweetened)

2 Tsp Mayer Lemon Juice

1/3 Cup Unsweetened Applesauce

1 1/2 Tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

Dry Ingredients:

3 1/4 Cups Almond Flour

1 Cup Non Modified Potato Starch

1/3 Cup Arrowroot Starch (or GMO Free Corn Starch )

1 1/3 Granulated Monk Fruit Sweetener (Lakanto)

1 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder

1 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda

1/2 Tsp Salt

Vanilla Lemon Frosting:

1 1/2 Sticks Softened Butter, Softened (Soy-Free Earth Balance Sticks)

1/2 Tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

3 Tsp Lemon Juice

2 Cups Organic Powdered Monk Fruit Sweetener (Lakanto) Grated Lemon Peel Raspberry Lemon Compote:

2 6oz Boxes of Raspberries (or 12oz Bag of Frozen Raspberries) 1 Tbsp Meyer Lemon Juice

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1 Tsp Arrowroot Starch

1 Tbsp MonkFruit Sugar (Lakanto)

Optional Ingredients:

More Berries for decorating Cake Grated Lemon Peel

Instructions:

Preparing Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease two 8-inch round pans or three 6-inch round pans with earth balance or palm shortening.

Put dairy-free milk & lemon juice in a bowl & allow to sit for about 10 minutes. Add applesauce & vanilla extract. Whisk/stir to combine.

Mix dry ingredients into a large bowl and combine well before sifting it all through. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until well incorporated and no large lumps remain. Batter should be thick yet pourable. You may add more almond flour if too runny or add more "milk" if too thick, then pour batter in equal quantities into greased pans.

Bake on center rack for 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of each cake comes out clean and cake edges are golden brown.Take cakes out of oven when ready & allow cakes to cool 15 minutes in pans.

Gently use butter knife to loosen edges of cake from pans. Use a cooling rack and allow to cool completely, a minimum of 4 to 6 hours on rack.

Do not frost until compote is placed between layers and all is completely cool.

Preparing Compote: While cakes are baking start the compote in a sauce pan by simmering two boxes of raspberries with vanilla extract, lemon juice, arrow root (or corn) starch & sugar for 20 mins till thick and delicious.

Once compote is ready set it aside to cool while cakes are cooling. Once all ingredients have cooled down, Add compote between layers then start frosting. Wait to prep frosting right before adding it to the cake.

Preparing Vanilla Lemon Icing: Softened (not melted) 1.5 stick of soy-free earth balance. Add 1 tbsp of lemon juice, a generous amount of finely grated lemon peel (1 tbsp about) 2 cups of Lakanto powdered monk & vanilla extract. Beat until fluffy and creamy with no lumps. Now Frost your cake! Optional: Add raspberries or any other berries with some grated lemon peel (or drizzle cool compote on top if you have any left over.) Optional: If you're more of a frosting person, you can skip the raspberry lemon compote and make extra frosting and add it in between layers.

Store cake covered at room temperature for 1-2 days or in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.

Enjoy!