Egg-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Cake

Egg-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Cake

This cake started off as a regular egg-free chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Then the devil showed his hand! In a flash of sinful inspiration, I thought, why not sandwich the layers with dark chocolate mousse? And then, frost the luscious layers with rich peanut butter frosting. Turned out to be like a deluxe version of a chocolate peanut-butter cup! This one is really for those who love that chocolate-peanut butter combination.....mmmm, maybe next time, I'll coat the sides with crushed toasted peanuts!

Egg-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Cake

Dry ingredients:
2 1/4 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/3 cup fine sugar
1/3 cup soft brown sugar

Wet Ingredients:
12oz water
9 tablespoons sunflower oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method: Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius or 350 degrees fahrenheit. Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together thoroughly with a whisk. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix till well combined. Pour into 2 7" shallow cake pans and bake for 20 minutes to 30minutes, till done. Cool completely before turning out of tins. Sandwich with Egg-free Dark Chocolate Mousse and frost with Peanut Butter Frosting.

Egg-free Dark Chocolate Mousse

This makes more than you will need for the cake filling but then, hey! more mousse is good news, right? Pipe left-overs into small glasses, chill and tuck in!

7oz dark chocolate
1 cup thickened cream

Method: Heat cream till bubbles form around the edges of the pan. Don't let it boil or cream will curdle. Pour heated cream onto the chocolate and stir till chocolate melts completely. Cool and chill for several hours. When completely cold, beat with a mixer till soft peaks form. Mousse is now ready to eat or use in cake.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1/4 cup butter
1/4 shortening
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Method: Beat everything together in a mixer on medium till light and fluffy. Use to frost cake.

Chocolate frogs anyone?

Chocolate Frogs?

My children's friends bought them some chocolate frogs at extortionist prices from the Harry Potter exhibition, here in Singapore. Well, here is my take on chocolate frogs as a 'thank you' for the gift and for being such great friends as well! Egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes with dairy-free chocolate icing, topped with a cute fondant frog. Sorry, mine don't come with cards! This ones' for you two - Priya and Prakash Nair!

Is it really gluten-free?

Hi there! Be warned before you proceed any further with your reading. I'm about to embark on one of my pet peeves - the lack of allergy and content information in foods. The latest incident to trigger of my spiel on this happened yesterday. I was at local food fair, held at one of the malls close to home standing in a long and winding line to buy rice flour cakes, when I overheard a man asking the lady behind the counter if the tapioca pancakes she was cooking on the hotplate were wheat free. Despite the crowds, his question caught my attention as this is an area very close to my heart. We of the label/disclaimer-reading lot would totally understand this guy's query, right?  Not so the lady behind the counter. Her answer was a vague, "Just sugar, water and tapioca flour. Would you like to try one?" Well, the gentleman decided to bite the bullet and bought one. But this brings me to my pet peeve. The tapioca flour used to make the pancakes was probably not certified as being wheat-free. It probably IS wheat-free but without the guarantee of certification. See where I'm going with this? There is a huge grey area here which is a real nightmare zone for those of us dealing with with allergies and food intolerance on a daily basis though a minute by minute basis would be more accurate. We are living it.

Store-bought tapioca pancakes - are they gluten-free?

Much of the local food products in Singapore, while having the ingredients listed, do not carry allergy information.  The ingredients lists can be vague as well. A packet of tapioca flour from the local market, would list under ingredients just tapioca flour, which is fine. Cheap too. But there is no assurance or disclaimers that it contains just tapioca. For that, we have to head for over-priced specialist organic food shops. Even then, the range of products available is pretty limited. This leads to a great deal of frustration for most of us with allergies to contend with in our daily lives, especially when we call home, a real food paradise! Hopefully, this will change soon and we will have a better range of well-labelled food products with all the necessary information at lower prices available at local markets.....sounds like a dream.   

Cupcake decorating class for kids at IBM, Singapore

Tables prepped for kids decorating class

We did a couple of cupcake decorating sessions for 50 kids at IBM, Singapore. Each child was given 4 egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes to decorate. The sessions were completely egg, dairy, nut and gelatin free so that at least 4 of the main allergies were covered.

Animal face toppers 

Easy-to-do animal face toppers for the cupcakes were chosen for the decorating workshop, as the kids were ranged in age from 4 to 12. They were taught to make the faces of a pig, cat, bear and elephant (see picture above).

Messy fun!

The elephant was the star of the day. The children came up with some amazingly creative forms of the animal faces shown them. One of them made an incredible elephant face with heavy eyebrows which so reminded me of Snuffulufagus from Sesame Street!

Making animal face toppers for cupcakes

A great deal of free artistic expression was going on, I tell you! A lot of fun was had by all!