Gluten Free, Vegan Passover Round Up Part 2

As promised, Passover Round Up continues with gluten free, vegan chocolate cake recipes.  Since we had Passover dinner obligations with both sides of Girlfriend’s family, I decided to make a couple different desserts.  More for myself, so I wouldn’t get bored eating the same thing every night.  Girlfriend’s family was so supportive of my food allergies and called to walk through all the ingredients used in the beef brisket and side dishes to make sure all would be completely gluten and dairy free.  Of course I had to pass up Matzah ball soup which was a bummer.  Maybe next year I’ll take on gluten free Matzah balls… 

I made Lexie’s Kitchen’s Egg-Free, Dairy-Free Chocolate Decadence which tasted great and had some very healthy ingredients too.  I was skeptical to make a cake with black beans and cashews, but it was delicious!  Note that I left out the baking powder which is not kosher for Passover.  In general, I really like Lexie’s Kitchen’s blog which focuses on recipes that are free of gluten and casein and has a lot of egg-free recipes which are harder to find.  Lexie suggests using a 5 inch round cake pan for this recipe, but I didn't have one, so I used cupcake tins instead and made personal portions for everyone.  I must admit Lexie's presentation is much more pretty than mine, but they still tasted great! 

For the next night, I made Living Without Magazine’s recipe for Macaroon French Silk Pie which is completely free of eggs, dairy and gluten and really delicious!  As mentioned in Monday’s blog post, I couldn't use store-bought macaroons because they are not egg free.  So, use the recipe I posted on Monday for Gluten Free, Vegan macaroons for the macaroon crust.  I tried making Living Without's coconut milk whipped topping recipe at the link noted above and it was a disaster.  First it completely separated and was very grainy and then it turned back into liquid.  It never came close to a creamy consistency.  Let me know if you have any tips on how to perfect this recipe!  The pie was still good without the whipped topping - how can you go wrong with chocolate and macaroons?

Here's a close up of the crust:

Hope everyone's Seder was delicious and lots of gluten free goodies were available.  What are your favorite allergy friendly Seder dishes?

Gluten Free, Vegan Passover Round Up Part 1

Passover is my favorite holiday, mostly because of all the amazing food.  It’s funny that a holiday which eliminates yeast and breads was my favorite holiday even before I was gluten free. Every year, I anxiously await the usual treats: beef brisket, matzah ball soup, sponge cake with fresh whipped cream and, my all time favorite, carrot kugel. This year, I felt the same excitement until I realized that all the dishes I just mentioned have some form of gluten, eggs  and  / or dairy.  What was I supposed to eat for Passover?

I spend the holiday with Girlfriend’s family and know I won't be able to eat many of the dishes.  So, I volunteered to bring dessert and started experimenting to find a dessert worthy of the old classics.  I found some great recipes which I will share with you throughout the next few days.  Unfortunately, my attempts at altering carrot kugel have been unsuccessful.  The original recipe requires 9 eggs and, so far, I haven’t figured out how to alter an egg-free version while maintaining the appropriate consistency.  I still have a few ideas up my sleeve, so hopefully I’ll be sharing the recipe with all of you very soon.

Luckily, my dessert attempts were much more successful.  I found some great recipes for a couple different chocolate flourless cakes which I will share later this week.  Today we will focus on gluten free and egg free macaroons. Since Passover requires elimination of all leavening agents (e.g. flour), it is fairly easy to find gluten free macaroons at the grocery store.  Finding egg-free macaroons is another story.  Living Without magazine comes through as usual with a great gluten free, sugar free, egg free and dairy free Macaroon recipe:

I made a few changes in my version to eliminate vanilla extract which is one of the 40 foods I am ‘sensitive’ to and try to avoid when I can. Living Without suggests using honey or agave and I used agave (of course!). It was really difficult to find unsweetened shredded coconut. Whole Foods used to sell it, but recently discontinued the product.  So, I reduced the amount of agave required in the recipe and used sweetened coconut. The results were still delicious! Come back later in the week for a continuation of Gluten Free, Vegan Passover Round Up where I will share some delicious chocolate cake recipes.