This allergy friendly lime and coconut cake is easy to make and contains no dairy, no egg and no gluten so if you are feeding someone who is allergic to eggs or dairy, or is vegan, or who has coeliac disease then it’s a great cake to pull out for them. It’s ingredients are simple and the base of the cake could be used to add other flavours to, so you could omit the lime and coconut and instead add orange oil & coco powder to make it a chocolate orange cake or you could stick to simple vanilla.
I created this cake and kind of winged it with the ingredients and it turned out well, so it’s blog post worthy.
Egg is a base ingredient for most cakes and replacing egg takes some thought and effort. I have tried the bicarbonate and vinegar method to replace eggs and whilst it works in that it gives a cake the “rise” you want from egg, I don’t like the taste. You can also use banana as an egg substitute for some recipes and it works well but I think you can still tell there is banana present and I didn’t want that for this cake.
I prefer to use ingredients I can name rather than weird and wonderful chemicals so I do try and keep it that way, if I can when cooking and baking. Saying that, you may wonder what the ingredient I am talking about next is.
I used Aquafaba, which is the water or liquid from chickpeas and we used pre packaged aquafaba from Oggs. You can of course make your own, by using canned or boiled chickpea liquid but if I don’t want to use chickpeas for other recipes I prefer to use a ready to use aquafaba.
It sounds weird but it’s a natural by-product of another food, so I promise it really isn’t. It also works brilliantly as an egg substitute and I have made meringue with it, and used it in baking and cooking when I need to be egg free.
For the cake you will need:
150mls of aquafaba
170g of self raising gluten free flour
120g of dairy free spread, or you can use vegetable oil
170g of caster sugar
Lime juice. 5-6 tablespoons, squeezed
200g of dessicated coconut
1.5tsp of bicarbonate of soda
A lined medium sized cake tin, lined.
Set your oven to 190 degrees fan or 200 degrees if not fan assisted.
Cream the butter or oil and sugar together. Then gradually whisk in the aquafaba until well combined. You can then add your lime juice.
Mix the bicarbonate of soda in with the flour, and desiccated coconut and combine these with the butter, sugar and aquafaba and mix well until smooth.
Pour into your lined baking tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 35 minutes. Like any cake a cake skewer will come out clean.
Allow to cool.
Icing choices…
You could treat this like a lemon drizzle cake and mix icing sugar, coconut extract and lime just into a runny thin paste and pour it over the cake, or you can make a lime frosting.
For a dairy free frosting you will need 50ml of the aquafaba, 200g of dairy free spread, and 250g of icing sugar and 3 table spoons of lime juice.
Whisk the aquafaba with a fork until it is frothy, and then set aside.
Combine the icing sugar and dairy free spread with the lime juice and mix it together. You may need to add a little more icing sugar to get the firm texture of frosting you want.
Add your aquafaba and combine gently.
When the lime and coconut cake is cool, you can smooth the frosting over the cake.
If you want to decorate the cake you can grate some lime zest over the frosting.
This keeps for 3-4 days and is best in an airtight container if you use the drizzle icing or in the fridge if you use the frosting.
But, like all cake, it never lasts that long in this house…
If you love orange cake, then you could try this orange and polenta cake, that is also a family favourite and gluten and dairy free too…