From Lauren: This stunning Strawberry Coconut Flour Cake recipe comes from my friend Melanie Christner. Melanie is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner like me and also a Certified GAPS Instructor. The GAPS Diet – a temporary healing protocol – was where I started years ago when I first started using food to manage my autoimmune disease.
GAPS is a powerful tool, but it can be hard to get started and stay on track. That’s why Melanie created her unique and highly popular GAPS Class. It’s a 12-module course with individual support from Melanie. Registration for the winter course closes January 25th, 2015. Learn more and sign up here if you are interested!
Strawberry Coconut Flour Cake
I love surprising guests with something that tastes great, yet is made without grains and white sugar. Recently, I had another chance to pull off a fun culinary confection when it was my daughter’s 10th birthday. I let her have her choice of cakes to celebrate, and she chose a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. So with a little inspiration, I developed this GAPS Strawberry Coconut Flour Cake.
- ½ cup fresh strawberries, diced
- 5 tablespoons chilled butter, grated
- 1 cup coconut flour, available here or at health food stores (to measure, stir coconut flour with a fork, then dip in the measuring cup and level the top with the back of a knife)
- 8 eggs
- ½ cup raw honey, available here or at health food stores
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup whole-milk yogurt (for GAPS, it should be 24 hour cultured homemade yogurt. Click here for a recipe.)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- Double batch of GAPS Strawberry Buttercream Frosting, recipe here
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9 inch cake pan with parchment paper and coat the sides with butter or coconut oil.
- Put the honey and eggs in the bowl of a standing mixer. Using the whisk attachment, mix on medium-high (setting 6 on my Kitchen-aid mixer) for 5+ minutes, until pale yellow and frothy.
- Add the grated butter and mix for another minute.
- In a separate bowl, mix the coconut flour, salt, and baking soda together, then add to the honey and eggs mixture. Mix for about 1 minute.
- Gently mix in diced strawberries, yogurt and vanilla extract.
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting with Strawberry Buttercream Frosting.
Want to try GAPS™?
If you are interested in improving the health of your brain, or that of your family members, the GAPS™ Protocol may be what you are looking for. The heart of GAPS is real food. Nourishing food. Healing food. Brain food. Gut food.
If you are considering GAPS already, or are already practicing it, but would like some support, check out Melanie’s family-friendly class here on the GAPS Protocol. Class is enrolling now, until January 25th, 2015.
Here is what a couple of the participants from the previous class had to say:
“This class will provide you with the tools to be successful! If you intend to work with the GAPS diet, you will be much better prepared after taking this course. The Facebook forum is worth the price of the course all by itself… Don’t miss the opportunity to enroll!”
“Very good information about gut health, leaky gut, and how to heal it with GAPS and an awesome support community! Lots of great tips, recipes, and info on supplements to go along with the GAPS book. Access to our wonderful teacher, who patiently answered endless questions.”
For information and to register, please visit www.gapsclass.com.
About Melanie Christner, instructor of GAPS Class
Melanie delights in helping you apply healing protocols to everyday life, while eating really great food…and becoming friends with your body again. She writes at HonestBody.com. As a mom of four children herself, she works with moms and their kiddos to help them feel their best and to have all the life and energy they were meant to have. Melanie is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), Certified GAPS Practitioner, and Healing Foods Specialist (CFHS) in Vermont. For fun you can either find her playing in her kitchen, Nordic skiing, or swimming in the Green Mountain rivers with her family.
I don’t understand how you can say this is paleo since it contains butter and Milk?
What can I use as a dairy free substitute for the butter and yoghurt? Maybe coconut oil and coconut cream maybe?
Could almond flour be used in place of coconut?
Butter and 24 hour cultured yogurt do not constitute this as no dairy. Even if it a grassfed golden angel cow it is still dairy. It can not be made better. Dairy is still dairy the molecular make-up is still the same.
This was amazing! Now I’m going to use this recipe as my base to make all kinds of low-carb cakes. (I modified it by halving the sweetener and used maple syrup instead).
Thank you so much for posting this. I already have plans to adapt it for cinnamon cake and nut cake.
I also used almond essence instead of vanilla extract because I didn’t have any on hand. Almond essence is amazing.
So glad you enjoyed the recipe!
In this picture, do you have one 9 inch cake or two?