An 8 Year Old’s DREAM Castle Birthday Cake – and it’s mostly GF/Paleo too ;0)

My goodness I knew I was getting behind on things when I went through my pictures on the camera and found some from The Boy’s 8th birthday! It was only a few months ago, but it seems like ages!

Since The Man and I were on a paleo-ish diet for 4 weeks (oops, I owe an update on that too :D), I wanted to make a cake that we could all eat. That was a bit of a mistake. Because the end result was so good I ended up eating too much of it. ‘Cuz it was “healthy” right? Hah, I should have just made it unhealthy, had my one piece and been done with it.

To the cake’s credit, it WAS delicious! And I learned a LOT about GF / paleo baking. Like coconut flour cake is not going to turn out like cake. More like a vanilla, coconut granola bar. Still good, but definitely not cake.

Coconut oil tastes good in EVERYTHING. So good I can see why people like to eat it. By the spoonful. I may have done this also….just sayin’ :D
It’s a lot easier and cheaper to just buy a gluten free cake mix. But you know me, I have to try it from scratch a few times, I just can’t go straight to a mix without making the attempt! Hmm, maybe that’s why our grocery bills were so high in the past….. Confession – I ran out of ingredients and had to buy a gluten-free cake mix after my vanilla cake attempt failed. So half the cake was scratch, the other half a box mix :D
Gluten-free cake tastes best immediately after it’s been baked. The next day it’s pretty stale. BUT…..
When in doubt, drown it in chocolate :D

In case you are interested in making a gluten free/paleo cake mix from scratch, I’ll share the recipe that I used and the modifications that I made. If you try it let me know how it turned out!

Ingredients

Cake Base

1 1/2 cup almond flour
1 1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cups coconut oil
6 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup honey

Filling

1 1/2 cup heavy cream or coconut cream (skimmed from the top of an unshaken can of coconut milk)
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Ganache

1 teaspoon vanilla
8 tablespoons butter or coconut oil
8oz unsweetened chocolate squares
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1-2 tablespoon honey

Directions

Cake Base

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 square cake pans with coconut oil and line with parchment paper.
Combine dry ingredients with a spoon in a medium size bowl and set aside.
Whisk wet ingredients together.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and fold just until combined.
Pour mixture into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Cool for 5 minutes then remove from pan and cool completely.

Filling

Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler over medium heat.
Beat the cream until fairly stiff. (Coconut cream may not get as stiff, but that’s ok!)
Add melted chocolate and give another quick whip, scraping down the sides and whipping until combined.

Ganache

Melt the butter/coconut oil, unsweetened chocolate and chocolate chips in a double boiler over simmering water.
Once melted, stir in the honey then turn off the heat.
Remove the bowl from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature. This takes a bit of patience! Stir every so often so it doesn’t get too hard. You want it cool and still a liquid so you can pour it over the cake! This may take up to an hour, so plan ahead.
Once cooled, layer the cakes with the filling between. Do a crumb coat on the outside of the cake.
Pour the room temp, thickened ganache over the top of the cake. Don’t panic. It will be a bit runny and you might have a hard time getting it to stick in spots. But wait until it hardens a little if necessary and add some more over the patchy areas.

After I poured on the ganache, I started to panic. Yeah, it was dripping down the sides and I was supposed to be sticking the NON-GF/Paleo part of the cake to this liquidy goop?!? The Man stepped in to encourage and cheer me on, and I proceeded with my plan anyway. And it worked!

Ganache is truly amazing, so don’t panic and freak out like I did. It might be a bit messy as an icing alternative, but it WILL firm up!

I used stacks of Fudgeos, stuck together with peanut butter for the “towers”. Kit-Kats (yes, I know, NOT gluten-free :D) were the castle turrets, draw-bridge and other details, while chocolate bar pieces acted as the castle’s stone walls. I ran out of chocolate bars, so the back didn’t get finished :D