Celebrate the happiest of birthdays with gluten free, allergen friendly chocolate chip cake!
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We celebrated a brand new *5* year old in the house last week!
Our spunky little Claire Joy was born 5 years ago and I don’t think my house has stopped moving since 🙂 This kid is constantly on the go, thinking all the time, has the most inquisitive questions, and really keeps me on my toes. My extremely laid back husband somehow thinks I may be getting a dose of my own medicine most days 🙂
We were so excited to celebrate Claire with family, and this year she asked for chocolate chip cake!
Over the last handful of years having multiple birthdays in the house, I have really gotten used to gluten free cake making and this cake is nice and moist, really flavorful, and very easy to make…if you have been following me for very long you know that my least favorite kitchen tasks revolve around baking so I tend to lean toward the no fuss route when it comes to cakes.
This was a really fun cake to make and it really made Claire smile – we started with a cup of chocolate chips for the batter and she ended up wanting to dump the whole bag in! I rolled with it and it really was yummy! We served the cake with homemade maple vanilla ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce and it was just perfect!
Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Birthday Cake
Ingredients
VANILLA CAKE ::
- ¾ cup whole milk or coconut milk
- 4 pastured eggs
- 1½ cups organic pure cane sugar
- 1 cup softened butter or softened coconut oil
- 2 TB apple cider vinegar I know this is a strange ingredient - but it helps with the rise - don't leave it out! I promise it won't make it taste bad!
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract or more vanilla extract
- 1½ cups brown rice flour
- ⅔ cup potato starch
- ⅓ cup tapioca flour
- ½ tsp sea salt
- 1 TB aluminum free baking powder
- 1 tsp xanthan gum
- 1 - 10 oz bag Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips
VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING::
- 2 cups softened butter or palm shortening
- 3½ cups organic powdered cane sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1-2 TB whole milk or coconut milk
- Chocolate Chips for decoration
Instructions
- Butter two 8-inch cake pan rounds, and fit parchment paper to the bottom of each pan sticking to the butter.
- Blend the wet ingredients (milk, eggs, sugar, butter, vinegar, vanilla extract, and almond extract) in a large mixing bowl for a couple minutes until well combined.
- Add the rest of the ingredients (the dry ingredients) EXCEPT the chocolate chips right into the bowl, and blend to combine until creamy. Fold the chocolate chips into the batter with a spoon.
- Divide the batter between the 2 cake pans evenly and bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes. Let the cakes cool about 20 minutes before taking them out to cool the rest of the way on a cooling rack.
- Once the cakes are cooled completely, you can frost them. Just blend the vanilla bean frosting ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl until well combined and frost your cake how you want, and then decorate with chocolate chips.
For more real food treat ideas, you can follow my Treat Ideas board on Pinterest!
More real food ideas you might like:
Strawberry Butterfly Birthday Cake
This is such a fun cake! I love her expression looking at the cake too! What a sweet moment you captured.
Looks delicious, Renee!! We love chocolate chip anything. And Claire is so cute.
Quick question – it says allergen friendly at the top of the post, but it seems that the cake has dairy, nuts, eggs and corn. Do you just mean it’s gluten free?
Hi Mary. I give the dairy free swaps in the recipe as well as the almond extract can be swapped for more vanilla. Eggs would be the only common allergen. For many people this cake will work – I understand there are a handful that may not be able to make it work if they have egg allergies unless they want to play around with it using gelatin eggs and adding some ACV for rise. I hope that helps your question!
Yum! We have 2 birthdays coming up in our house and I will be trying this cake for one. My daughter requested a watermelon cake (literally a watermelon cut into a cake shape frosted with coconut whip cream)
Hi! I made this for a birthday. But my cakes did not rise…felt heavy and dense. I couldn’t stay for the cutting so I can’t say for sure. Have you had that experience with this recipe?
Hi Carla – It is not super light and fluffy – most gluten free cakes are not. However it does rise for me and still feels like cake versus super dense. Did you use a different flour blend or swap any of the ingredients?