An excellent lunchbox-filler, this cake freezes well too.

As a mother of three young children I’m always on the look-out for recipes to fill their lunchboxes, and when my friend Amber first cooked this for me I knew it was a keeper. While none of us have issues with gluten, I do like to bake using a range of different flours so we’re not consuming home baking that is made solely with white flour. It’s also great to have a gluten-free recipe or two up your sleeve for when you have guests that do in fact follow a gluten-free diet. This recipe produces a cake with a lovely dense texture and is studded with chunks of dark chocolate. I make this cake, cut it into 16 squares and then freeze it so I can then pull pieces out for school lunches in the morning.  

GLUTEN-FREE BANANA CHOCOLATE CAKE

• 150g butter, melted, cooled slightly
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 bananas
• ¾ cup milk (I have made this with coconut cream also. Nut milk will be fine too)
• ¾ cup coconut flour
• 1¼ cups tapioca flour
• ⅓ cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 150g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 25cm square cake tin. 

Once the butter has cooled, whisk in the vanilla and sugar to temper. Next add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition. Then break the bananas into the pot and, using a fork, mash them into the butter mixture before adding the milk and stirring to combine.

Lastly add in the flours, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda and chopped chocolate. Stir well and then spoon into the greased tin. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack to cool.