(Kinda) Guilt-Free Friday: Amaretto Cake

I love birthdays.  They’re my favorite holiday.  It’s a celebration of YOU!  A special day that’s all about you, all for you.  You rock, you're awesome, you’re special, you’re important, and you deserve a holiday every year!  And I think the older you get, the more you should celebrate.  It’s that much longer that you’ve been on this earth being your awesome self!  That’s definitely reason to celebrate!

And this cake is a great dessert to add to your celebration of you!

And I totally winged it (winged? Wung? What’s the proper tense to that word, grammar nerds?).  I combined three different recipes to make this one.  The original recipe was brought to my attention by a couple of friends who raved about the Amaretto Divine cake.  Which is like 1000 calories a slice.  But apparently it’s so amazing that it doesn’t matter how many calories are in it, it’s totally worth every one.  The recipe sure did LOOK divine!  I still don’t know what it tastes like though, since I tweaked it.  And “tweaked” is putting it very lightly.  I Paleo-ized it!  This is the first time I Paleo-ized something!

I found a paleo vanilla cake recipe on Pretty in Primal that got really good reviews, so I used that as my base, and added and subbed here and there, switching back and forth from that recipe to the Amaretto Divine recipe, and hoped for the best.  As for the icing, I found a Paleo maple cashewbutter icing recipe that sounded yummy, so I went with it.  It really was yummy – I’ll be making that again for sure!

Here’s my version of a great (adult) birthday cake, which, by the way, only makes one cake.  If you want a pretty layered cake, make two batches of this recipe.  Oh and another tip, make it the day before.  We found that the leftovers were even better than the fresh cake!  (My apologies to our friends who enjoyed this cake with us the day it was made...)

Another fabulous phone picture...

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

¾ cup amaretto liqueur

½ cup palm sugar

½ cup coconut flour

½ cup almond flour

½ cup non-dairy amaretto coffee creamer

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 packet Stevia for added sweetness (you can omit this if you want)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, vanilla, amaretto, and sugar.  Add the flours, creamer, salt, and baking soda.  Mix together until a batter forms.  Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan and pour in the batter.  Bake for 20-30 minutes until a knife or toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cool for one hour and frost with the icing:

Icing:

1 cup cashew butter (or 2 cups cashews in the food processor for 2-3 minutes)

1 cup coconut butter

1/3 cup pure maple syrup

1/4 cup amaretto liqueur

1/2 cup non-dairy amaretto coffee creamer

Mix all ingredients with a hand mixer until smooth. 

I melted a giant Hershey’s dark chocolate candy bar and drizzled it over the icing and topped with crushed Heath bits.  If anyone reading this is super strict paleo, don’t yell at me, I know there’s soy and bad stuff in the chocolates I used and I feel mildly guilty about this… and I AM trying to steer away from using chocolates with soy products in them, but I’m hoping to let this one slide just this one time.  Maybe next year I’ll have an alternative!