Last week on my facebook page I shared a picture of a cake that I had made for my Crossfit Coach

Now, I wont get onto my love of crossfit, or paleo eating on this blog (don’t get me started!), but after mentioning that this cake was in fact sugar free, dairy free and gluten free, I had many requests for the recipe!

It isn’t one of those cakes that is free of everything, including taste! So definitely keep this recipe aside for the time when you need to make something for someone with allergies… or, like me, you are sugar free.

The cake is like a mud cake in texture, rather than a sponge cake and the recipe is adapted from Paleo Spirit

I made 3 layers of a 6″ round cake, but it would make a standard 8″ cake (though you probably wouldn’t get a massive amount of height… you would need filling to add to this)

• 1 cup coconut flour
• 3/4 cup high quality cacao powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 9 eggs
• 3/4 cup coconut oil (melted)
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup (I buy this at Aldi!)
• 3/4 cup brewed coffee
• 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Beat the eggs for 1 minute and then add the remaining wet ingredients (coconut oil, maple syrup, coffee and vanilla) and beat until combined.

Mix your dry ingredients in a bowl and then add them to your mixer. Beat slowly, scraping down the edges until combined. Then beat on high speed for 1 minute. Add to a fully lined tin and then bake on 160 degrees. Baking time will depend on each individual oven and whether you are baking layers (I baked 6″ layers (3 of them) and I think they took around 30mins each), or the full cake. Just keep checking until a skewer comes out clean.

(sorry I don’t have any close up or inside pics of the cake!)

And now for the best bit… the ICING!!!!! I thought long and hard about this… I really wanted something that tasted like icing and was nice and fluffy. My Coach had one request and that was peanut butter!!! So, I whipped up two cans of coconut cream (excluding the water) and whipped it for a few minutes in my mixer. Then I added 3 large spoonfuls of peanut butter and added some pure maple syrup to taste. It was AMAZING!!!!!!! You could easily add a paleo nutella, or mix up some raw cacao powder with water and make a chocolate version. Just make sure your peanut butter is the real deal and doesn’t include sugar.

I topped off the cake with maple syrup baked bacon pieces on top

Enjoy!