Feeding the 150

Every month - well, almost every month; we do take a break in August, and in either December or January (it was December this time) - our church does a bring-and-share lunch after the service.

When there were only around 30 of us, this wasn't complicated. There was the lady who just about can't exist in the same room as a nut, so no nuts, but other than that you just did what seemed reasonable (and, Adrian Plass notwithstanding, we were never inundated with quiche). At that point I didn't have the air fryer, so I'd do some falafels in the microwave, followed by one of those pouches of microwaveable rice. The rice would then get mixed with chopped cherry tomatoes, oil, and salt. Since I was the only vegan in the church at the time, that tended to be mainly what I ate; and someone always brings fruit, so I'd get a pudding. The falafels would always vanish quickly, and I'd sit there hoping people would also eat all the rice salad, otherwise I'd be finishing it up all week and cold rice is kind of unexciting. We do meet in the secondary school, but we're not allowed to use their kitchen (not even for washing up, which is a bit harsh), so we have no way of heating food.

Things started to get more... shall we say, interesting... some time before the church started growing in earnest. I wanted to go and visit my sister in Kendal, but that meant trains, and the disability assistance on British trains is kind of a toggle switch. It's either absolutely brilliant or not there at all, and you can never be quite sure which you're going to get. So I needed someone to go with me, and I have this young friend we'll call The Historian who was an impecunious teaching assistant at the time (he's since trained as a teacher and is now doing that). He loves fell-walking, so he jumped at the chance of a free holiday in the Lake District in exchange for shepherding me on the trains and a little light wheelchair-pushing at the other end.

It should all have been great, but fate stepped in. The Historian already had quite a bad crop of mouth ulcers when we set off, and they got worse. Significantly worse, to the point where he couldn't eat and was even having trouble drinking. So he wasn't doing any fell-walking. My resourceful sister racked her brains to see what she could make that he might manage to eat, and came up with scrambled egg; so he lived on that for about a day, at which point my sister decided he really ought to be getting better by now and frog-marched him down to Urgent Care at the local surgery. The doctor who examined him said he'd never seen mouth ulcers like that in his entire career, gave him something to help (it did, thankfully), and told him to get himself checked for coeliac disease as soon as he got home. And we all went "coeliac disease? Really?"

It was. And as soon as The Historian went gluten-free, things started to improve very fast. Within a few weeks he was recovering his previous energy levels, and soon he was putting on weight, which was very much needed, since he'd been as thin as a rail. Fortunately he already liked my rice salad, which was gluten-free by happenstance; the falafels weren't, so I started buying a different brand (which I liked better too, so it was a win-win).

So when I got the air fryer, my first thought was "yay! I can make a cake for the church lunch!", and my second thought was "oh, but not just the one - we're also going to need a gluten-free cake". The Historian likes a nice big slice of chocolate cake, and I wasn't going to leave him out.

I'm still doing the falafels and rice salad. Those are both everyone-friendly (well, unless you have very high blood pressure; I don't believe in stinting on the salt when you're using tomatoes). But now they've been joined by a couple more of my recipe rescues, both originally from the Internet. I had to alter both of them a fair bit to get them to work well, but especially the gluten-free cake; apart from the fact that I substituted the teff flour to make it gluten-free in the first place, the other ingredients were also originally way out. There was, for instance, more cocoa powder than flour. I did double test runs for this one, one using regular wholemeal flour for me, the other with the teff flour for The Historian, and only when we were both happy with it did I write down the final version. And it turns out that there are a couple more people in the church now who need gluten-free; and I'm not sure if I'm still the only vegan or not, but there's definitely at least one person who can't eat dairy, so he'll make a beeline for the vegan stuff.

As for the chocolate fudge icing, that's adapted from the ganache for Finnegan's Cake. I had to de-nut it for the benefit of our super-allergic lady. Interestingly, I was once low on chocolate chips, so had to substitute a mixture of cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and sugar for part of the quantity (I keep cocoa butter to melt down and use as a chapstick, for which purpose it is very effective). The result still tasted good and was most splendidly fudgy, but it did not set. At all. Squidge squidge!

Church Lunch Cake Duo (and Fudge Icing)

For the regular cake
100 g plain wholemeal flour
1 level tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
100 g soft dark brown sugar
pinch of salt
80 ml rapeseed oil
180 ml water at room temperature

For the small gluten-free cake
40 g teff flour
40 g soft dark brown sugar
5 g cocoa powder
1/4 level tsp gluten-free baking powder
45 ml oat or soya milk
30 ml rapeseed oil
15 ml water
pinch of salt

For the chocolate fudge icing
100 ml water or oat/soya milk
25 g rapeseed oil (or about 30 ml, but in this case it's simpler to weigh it)
120 g dark chocolate chips
80 g icing sugar
1.5 ml pure vanilla or other flavour extract (optional)

First, make the regular cake. Line a round 15 cm cake tin and mix the dry ingredients (including the sugar) in a bowl. Add the oil and water, and mix until all the ingredients are just combined. Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake in the air fryer at 160 C for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. No need to preheat the air fryer.

Now make the small gluten-free cake. Put the plant milk, oil, water, and sugar into a small bowl and whisk to form a smooth batter. Add the teff flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt. (Note: if you can't get gluten-free baking powder, you can improvise using a pinch of bicarb and a little lemon juice or vinegar.) Preheat the air fryer for 2 minutes at 190 C.

Beat the mixture to a smooth paste, then pour into a lined 10 cm tin or ramekin. Bake in the air fryer at 190 C for 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. [No, I have no idea why the smaller cake effectively needs more baking than the larger cake, but this recipe combination has been quite extensively tested by now and I assure you it does! It's not the teff flour; the same time is needed if you use regular flour.]

Remove cake carefully, and allow to cool completely before removing it from the tin or ramekin. And if it's after 8 pm by now, don't make the icing till the following morning; it can take several hours to cool sufficiently to put on the cakes.

To make the icing, put the first three ingredients in a jug or bowl, and heat in the microwave until the chocolate is sufficiently melted to be easily stirred in (this should take a minute or less). Stir well until everything is fully blended, then add the icing sugar and the flavour extract (if using). Allow to cool and thicken, then spread generously over both cakes. Unless the weather is very hot, this should set adequately overnight without the cakes needing to be put in the fridge.