This gluten free Double Chocolate Orange Torte will make a nice treat for Passover, which is rapidly approaching! My family, however, needed no holiday or excuse to devour the entire cake on a Sunday afternoon. This treat is easy to make and even easier to eat. Go ahead, try some and see for yourself.
Double Chocolate Orange Torte
Ingredients
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- ½ cup blanched almond flour (not almond meal)
- ¼ cup cacao powder
- ½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- 3 large eggs
- ½ cup agave nectar or honey
- ½ cup grapeseed oil or palm shortening
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- ½ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Place ½ cup chocolate chips in a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground to the texture of gravel
- Pulse in almond flour, cacao powder and salt and process until well combined, about 10 seconds
- Add eggs to food processor and pulse again, then add in agave, grapeseed oil and orange zest
- Pulse all ingredients together until smooth
- Remove "bowl" from food processor and stir in second ½ cup of chocolate chips using a spoon or spatula
- Transfer batter into a well oiled 8 inch springform pan
- Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean
I adapted this torte recipe from a site called Mandelininc.com which has yummy ideas for almond flour goodies. The recipe I based mine on is called Chocolate Citrus Almond Torte.
Finally, I just wanted to share some disturbing information that I garnered from an article in this Sunday’s New York Times. Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a very informative piece on the use of antibiotics in factory farming. According to his article we, “need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans.”
Did you know that 70% of the antibiotics used in this country are administered to healthy farm animals. Why is this done? It helps the animals grow faster and bulk up, making them, of course, more valuable. Meat is sold by the pound –think quantity, not quality.
The danger of this practice? With antibiotics so prevalent, new “super bugs” are developing that are resistant to all existing anti-biotics. According to Kristof, more than 18,000 people are dying each year from these new strains of disease that are now untreatable with even the most powerful antibiotics. Pretty scary to think that after close to a century of antibiotic use we could slip back into a world where bacterial diseases (such as tuberculosis) are untreatable and ravage our population on a large scale as they once did.
What can we do? First, if you can avoid all animal products from CAFO farms (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). These types of farms crowd animals into unsanitary conditions, creating infection and of course increasing the need for the administration of prophylactic antibiotics. If you can, purchase organic meats/eggs/dairy from a farmer/rancher in your area (grass fed meat is actually best, however, that’s another story altogether).
And for all you vegans out there –kudos for not supporting the animal product industry in any way, however, these antibiotic resistant infections are contagious to everyone. They originate in a farm and can mutate to our bodies in many ways, not just by eating meat.
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I am hardly an expert on this issue, nor do I claim to be. So please, those of you that have more information, leave a comment and let’s figure out what else we can do to change this frightening trend.
Sylvia Wildflower Smiles says
This was a DIVINE experience! Thank YOU! This one is getting filed away, to be made again and again and again…
Jana @ Weekend Vintage says
Yummy….thanks for speaking out on the feed lot beef. We recently switched over to grass fed beef. We found it for a reasonable price at our Local Trader Joes.
Jana
Laura Robbins says
Dear Elana,
I HATEDETESTDESPISED Baking, always have. It’s messy, time consuming, complicated and the outcome was usually disastrous.
Until I met your Almond flour, walnut cookies. Now I am a baking junkie.
ThankyouTHANKYOUthankYOU for making recipes so easy, consistent, and healthy!!!
Finally I can own a cupcake pan!
All the best~Lala
Elana Daley says
Hi Elana-
I made this for our supper club on Sat, Mar 20th. We had our 2010 launch party and I was in charge of desert. It had to be dairy free so I made this recipe along with a strawberry drizzle and homemade sugar free melon sorbet. Everyone loved it. Wish I would have taken a photo for you. It’s so easy to let everyone know where I get my recipes. Must be the name… lol.
The torte was a hit. Everyone loved it and could hardly believe it was dairy free and gluten free and tasted so good. Oh, I also made the chocolate chip cookie recipe which turned out more to be a chocolate cookie with chunks of dark chocolate. They loved those too.
Thanks a bunch. Now to prepare for pesach. Happy Passover.
Elana
Katrina says
Unfortunately the poor animals suffer extraordinary amounts for the food industry and to be able to meet the demand for all the people who want to eat it, the majority of the industry is going to be factory-style.
It’s not only the antibiotics that are unhealthy for us. The amount of meat we eat is very bad for us as we’re not adapted to eating such large amounts. It’s been linked with many types of cancer including colon, and is high in cholesterol etc.
Milk is probs the worst for us as it’s completely unnatural. It’s meant for a calf. So the mothers are impregnated has her child taken away from her after only a few days. They mourn for weeks. But that milk will be full of puss, hormones, fat etc (along with the added antibiotics)… everything meant for a small animal to grow big and strong quickly. It’s not good for us at all. Calcium can be obtained far more affectively from veg. The western world (where the most milk is consumed) has the highest level of osteoporosis (bone disease) and places such as Asia (where traditionally milk isn’t drank) has the lowest. Go to milkmyth.org to find out more (think that’s the right web address, if not type milk myth into google!).
This world can’t sustain the meat industry for the number of people there are. If people stopped consuming animal products waterways would be less polluted, rainforests would stop being chopped down (where GM soya is grown for animal feed), greenhouses gases would be cut significantly, we would be able to feed third world countries (no more starvation). Such improvements there would be, but we are driven by a taste. That’s all it is. Because it’s so easy and much more healthy to live without it now.
Anyways, think I’ve rambled enough!! The recipe looks amazing and hope to try it out soon. Thanks for sharing this and other other info :-)
Jen says
I made this cake last night and it is DELICIOUS! I love the orange essence. It may be one of my favorite chocolate cakes. I even served this to non gluten free people and everyone was asking me for the recipe, thanks Elana! Another great recipe from you. XO
cdecocina says
This looks absolutely delicious, as everything I see in this web. I will make it for sure, I´m a choco-addict.
Thanks a lot.
Online Degrees says
I am on the sixth round of antibiotics trying to get rid of a bad dental infection and it is not working. Thanks for opening everyone’s eyes.
Jean Gilmore says
Try coloidal silver instead of antibiotics.Your infection will be gone quickly.
Chelsea says
I made this last night for a friend who can’t eat gluten. She can’t eat tree nuts either, so I made this with a gluten-free flour blend and honey instead of agave, and it worked out really well! Thanks for a great recipe.
Diane-The W.H.O.L.E. Gang says
This will be in my oven shortly. I don’t care if it’s 7:30am.