Ingredients

150g

coconut butter, at room temperature

70g

dark chocolate, chopped up

300g

almond flour

1 1/4 teaspoons

xanthan gum

1 tsp

baking powder

1/2 tsp

sea salt

40g

unsweetened cocoa powder

300g

coconut sugar

eggs at room temperature, beaten

1/2 teaspoons

Steenbergs organic Fairtrade vanilla extract

For the Topping

100g

good quality dark chocolate, melted

Festive foraging of your choice, I went with rosehips, heather and mixed nuts

Soft, fudgy, chocolatey Christmas cake. What more could you want from a sweet treat? Dairy free, with no refined sugar and gluten free. From Niki Bakes.

Method

Preheat your oven to 180°C or gas mark 4 and grease a cake tin with olive oil, line with greaseproof paper and set aside.
Place the coconut butter and chopped unsweetened chocolate in a medium-sized heat-safe bowl on top of a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan that contains a small amount of simmering water, making sure that the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the surface of the water. Allow the water to simmer, stirring the chocolate and coconut butter occasionally, until the mixture is melted and smooth. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and set aside to cool briefly.
In a large bowl, place the almond flour, xanthan gum, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder. Set the bowl of dry ingredients aside.
To the bowl of melted chocolate and butter, add the coconut sugar, eggs and vanilla, mixing to combine after each addition. Create a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and add the buttermilk and then the chocolate and butter mixture, and mix to combine.
The cake batter should be thick and glossy. Pour the batter and smooth the top with a wet spatula. Place in the centre of the preheated oven and bake, rotating once during baking, until a toothpick inserted in the centre of each cake comes out with no more than a few moist crumbs attached (about 25 minutes).
Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool in the pans for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely and decorating your Christmas chocolate fudge cake.