Gluten Free Orange Cake with Chocolate Chips

This easy gluten free orange cake comes together quickly and tastes delicious even without gluten, grains, or refined sugar. Optional chocolate chips lend a delectable twist to the bright, citrus-y flavor. Make this simple orange cake recipe to perk up an ordinary day, pack it for a picnic, or dress it up for a special occasion!

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Cake isn’t really my thing. I like pie, and fruit desserts, and ice cream, and cookies. Cake is OK. But only if there is a lot of flavor! Those beautiful but boring bakery cakes that taste sweet and not much else? I don’t miss them. They aren’t even tempting.

This gluten free orange cake (with or without chocolate) is not like those flavor-free confections. Here you will find loads of flavor!

You will not find gluten or even grains. You also won’t find refined sugar; there is honey for sweetening, and not much. If you limit your sugar for any reason, you are in luck! I will even show you how to use chocolate without much sugar– and nothing artificial at all!

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Is Gluten Free Orange Cake Healthy?

Well, it is cake. This is not a healthy recipe in the sense that it can replace a meal. It should not be a dietary staple, and I don’t think of it as a primary source of nourishment. Or something to eat a lot of.

As an occasional treat, though, this gluten free orange cake isn’t a major indulgence. The cake is comprised mainly of coconut flour and eggs, with some butter, sour cream, and honey. There isn’t a lot of honey, and if you use high quality eggs and dairy products, this recipe is fairly harmless.

The flavor comes mainly from orange and chocolate. The juice of the orange adds a bit of sugar and flavor, and you could leave it out. The acidity helps the baking soda work, but the sour cream also provides acidity, so the orange juice isn’t essential.

The zest lends the orange flavor. Orange zest is actually pretty good for us! I like to use an organic orange anytime I use orange zest. Less likelihood of unwanted substances making their way into our cake that way. I wash them well before zesting.

The chocolate forms a part of the flavor as well. The cake works without any chocolate as a plain but delicious gluten free orange cake. If you can’t have chocolate, or don’t like it, or don’t have any on hand, you can have a good cake with no chocolate. (For GAPS diet, leaving the chocolate out would be best.)

Pretty Healthy Chocolate Options

You can use any chocolate chips that suit your diet for this recipe. Regular ones, no sugar versions, or chocolate chips sweetened with coconut sugar work well. You can even make your own honey sweetened chocolate chips.

If, like me, you don’t want to mess with making chocolate chips first, but you do want some lower sugar chocolate, there is a simple alternative. Choose a bar of chocolate that fits your goals, and grate it!

It is much easier to find very low sugar chocolate bars than chips. I have also had success with unsweetened chocolate in grated form. The shreds of chocolate are small enough that you can’t tell it is unsweetened in a sweet base, like a cake or banana split ice cream. If you are worried about it, add an extra tablespoon of honey to the batter!

So, if you are really strict about avoiding refined sugar, use unsweetened chocolate and grate it yourself. It takes just a minute or so. I often use 85-90% dark chocolate, and that is pretty low in refined sugar.

How healthy is coconut flour?

Like almond flour (the other popular low carb flour) coconut flour is gluten free and grain free. It is higher in fiber than almond and low in carbohydrates (though higher than almond). Coconut flour also supplies a range of vitamins and minerals, plus lauric acid, which is good for our hearts, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral. Learn more here.

On the downside, while being lower in oxalates than almond flour, coconut flour is higher in salicylates. Some people are more sensitive to salicylates than others; if you are sensitive, coconut flour might not be a good choice.

Coconut flour is cheaper than almond flour. Because it works very differently from other flours, you will use far less coconut flour than almond (or wheat flour or gluten free flour blend) in a recipe. (About 1/4 the amount of other flours.)

This is a drawback in its own way– substituting coconut flour into a recipe written for another flour is challenging. Save yourself the frustration (and expense and time) and start with a recipe that calls for coconut flour. Don’t try to convert! Coconut flour can produce inedibly dry and dense baked goods.

How to Make Gluten Free Orange Cake with Chocolate Chips

It’s ideal to get your ingredients close to room temperature for this recipe. If you’re in a hurry, just do what you can. While they are getting there, do your prep work.

Butter

Melt the butter. It doesn’t need to be hot, just to melt. Once it melts, you can brush a bit of it around your cake pan. I like to line the bottom with parchment, which doesn’t really need to be buttered. The sides of the pan will release the cake better if you grease them.

Orange and chocolate

Wash and zest your orange. If you want a lot of orange flavor, you can use 2 oranges. I use the fine side of a box grater, but you can use a zesting tool, a knife, or whatever method you prefer.

You can use chocolate chips in this recipe. It works with regular sized ones, and I suspect that the mini ones would be even better. You can chop a bar of chocolate into pieces instead.

I like grated chocolate best. If using unsweetened chocolate, grating is essential to keep the pieces really small so their bitterness is not noticeable. Even with lightly sweetened chocolate, I like the grated version because it distributes so well throughout the cake. Do it however you want!

Eggs

This is a recipe where separating the eggs and beating the whites separately is worth the extra few minutes’ effort. Coconut flour can produce heavy baked goods. Beating the whites helps offset that problem.

Beat the egg whites for 2-3 minutes by themselves. Be sure to do the whites first! You need clean beaters for them. If there is any fat on the beaters, the whites won’t whip up well. You can go from the whites straight to the yolks mixture without washing your beaters.

Stop when you get soft peaks. Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl with all the rest of the ingredients except for the zest and the chocolate. Beat the yolk mixture for a couple of minutes. It will lighten in color as air incorporates.

Putting it all together

Now you are ready to combine the two bowls and add the flavoring. Don’t use the beaters! You will over-mix the batter and let out the air you have incorporated with all that beating. Fold the whites into the yolk part of the batter gently with a spoon or spatula.

Before they are fully mixed, add the orange zest and the chocolate chips or grated chocolate. Mix only as much as you need to in order to get the batter smooth, then spread it into your pan.

Bake about 30 minutes at 350° F until the sides pull away from the edges and the top is browned. Cool 10 minutes in pan. Run a knife around the edges to be sure they aren’t attached, then invert the pan and remove the parchment. Turn cake right side up on a cooling rack or cake plate and cool completely.

How to Serve Gluten Free Orange Cake

This cake is great all by itself! You don’t need to add anything, so feel free to serve it plain. Maybe with some coffee or tea. You can also pack it for a picnic or sack lunch, or even for an afternoon snack away from home. If you want to fancy it up, here are some ways:

• whipped cream! It’s hard to go wrong with whipped cream.
• whipped coconut cream for a dairy free topping
• whipped cultured cream is also delicious and GAPS friendly
• a mixture of fresh and cultured cream (or fresh cream with a bit of thick yogurt or sour cream) is my favorite with this recipe– more interesting than plain whipped cream
• chocolate sauce
• vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream
• maybe more than one or these options
• make 2 cakes for a 2-layer version

Recipe Variations

• leave out the chocolate
• double the orange peel or add orange extract for more intense flavor
• swap lemon for orange
• use nondairy sour cream or yogurt and coconut oil for dairy free