Gluten-free, Dairy-free Chocolate Donuts (Paleo Indulgences Book Review)

Our gluten-free, dairy-free diet continues...  Many of my recipes have come from The Healthy Gluten Free Life.  I love the cookbook, so when I saw that the author had come out with a new book, Paleo Indulgences, I begged her to let me review a copy.  ;)

The Paleo diet is new to me, but it is gluten free and contains minimal dairy, so most of the recipes work for us.  Its actually grain free too; the baked goods are made with almond flour or coconut flour (much easier than the zillion different gf flours needed for some things).  Paleo Indulgences is not a Paleo guidebook, rather it tells you how to make those special treats you might be missing from time to time.  (Read: a mother's lifesaver!)

With Christmas coming up, and therefore all of the holiday recipes that we can't eat, I've been trying hard to come up with replacements.  I splurged on two donut pans and decided that would be our Christmas morning meal.  Of course we've had to test out a few recipes to be sure they work well...

This morning I used this recipe from Paleo Indulgences:

Chocolate Mini-Bundts

1/4 cup coconut flour, sifted
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

4 eggs
1 Tbs vanilla
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup coconut milk

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 350.  
2. Place the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk to combine.
3. Add the wet ingredients, except the coconut oil, to the dry and mix well with a hand mixer.
4. With the mixer on low, slowly pour in the coconut oil.  Mix well.
5. Divide the batter evenly among a 6-cavity greased mini bundt pan.
6. Bake 22-25 minutes, or until the center of the cakes spring back when pressed lightly.
7. Cool 10 minutes in the pan and then turn out onto a wire rack.  Cool completely before frosting.

I used two donut pans, and baked them for 15 minutes.  For the frosting I mixed some powdered sugar with a bit of coconut milk.  The donuts were cakey tasting, but my kids were completely thrilled!  We certainly didn't have any leftovers.

I'm sure I'll be using many more recipes from Paleo Indulgences.  Like The Healthy Gluten Free Life, there are full-page color photos for each recipe.  It is well written and easy to follow, with great information in the front of the book.  One thing to note is that recipes are sometimes small and need to be doubled for my family.  

Thanks, Tammy!