Pecan and Chocolate Fudge Ring

This delicious cake is gluten-free, paleo and can be dairy-free. The original gluten-containing version of this recipe came from one of my English cookbooks. I adapted it to be gluten-free, dairy-free and less sugary. The sauce resembles toffee—chewy and almost hard on the outside, but soft and creamy on the inside. You must turn the cake out of the pan within a few minutes of removing it from the oven, or the sauce hardens like caramel, and the cake won’t turn out. Too much sauce sticks to a tube or Bundt pan, so I use an 8” cake pan or my 9½” springform pan. The 9½” springform pan makes a 1” deep cake that is very rich.

Fudge Sauce Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil. With coconut oil, sauce on its own is boring, but tasty eaten with cake.
• ½ cup (3 oz., 84 g) light brown (soft brown) sugar. You can use less if it is too sweet.
• 2 Tbsp. (30 ml) milk
• 1 Tbsp. (15 ml) unsweetened cocoa, regular Hershey’s
• ¼ cup (1.5 oz., 40 g) gluten-free semi-sweet chocolate chips
• ½ cup finely chopped pecans or other nuts. You can leave nuts out, but I like the texture.

Cake Ingredients:

• 6 Tbsp. (3 oz., 84 g) very soft butter or coconut oil
• 1½ cup (6 oz., 180 g) almond flour (made from almonds ground without skin)
• ¾ cup (6 oz., 180 g) sugar
• 1 Tbsp. (30 ml) gluten-free vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. (5 ml) gluten-free baking powder
• 3 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and line the bottom of an 8” cake pan or 9½” springform pan. You need a cake pan that will allow you to turn out the cake.
2. Place the butter or coconut oil, sugar, milk and cocoa in a small pan. Heat gently until the butter and sugar melt without burning and the mix is smooth.
3. Stir in chocolate chips and stir until chips melt. This does take some time. Do not increase the heat to melt the chocolate. Stir in chopped nuts.
4. Pour the sauce into the bottom of the pan and set aside to cool. You can’t put metal pan with almost boiling sauce in fridge.
5. Place all the cake ingredients in a 4 cup (1 liter) bowl and beat for 1-2 minutes until smooth and creamy.
6. Carefully spoon cake mixture over sauce. Don’t pour cake mix onto sauce, as this will push the sauce to the edges of the pan. It will seem like not enough batter, but is fine.
7. Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes until cake has risen, is softly firm, has a light golden-brown color, and the sauce shows around the edges. I have cooked it for almost 50 minutes in different pans, so keep checking it after 30 minutes.
8. Remove from oven, cool in pan for about 3 minutes, then turn out onto cake serving plate. If you leave cake in the pan, as the sauce cools, it will set hard and not turn out.