Who woulda thought that you could make a sweet cake using an underground tuber that looks like a root vegetable from Mars? Certainly not me, but some smart person in Southeast Asia did, and for that, I’m thankful.
This cake contains no flour – except for a touch of starch – no added oil, no eggs, and no dairy. Unlike what most of us think of when we think of “cake,” cassava cake is rich, dense, chewy, and very moist.
Even though this contains very few of the traditional cake ingredients, if you look at each ingredient with a magnifying glass, you’ll see that the components aren’t all that different. Let me explain. Cakes need a form of starch, which usually comes from flour, to release their starch molecules when heated thus making the cake solid. Here, grated and pureed cassava provides the starch necessary to stabilize the cake, which is ingenious baking at its finest, because behind every flour, there’s a starchy substance like this. Because cassava’s used in its raw, pureed form, it’s thick & moist, meaning it binds the cake at the same time. Bye bye eggs!
Most cakes also contain oil, which is crucial for lubricating the starch granules, therefore making a cake that’s moist with a fine texture. At the base of things, oils are just fats. Just as with the yucca, this cake gets its fats from a more whole form: coconut cream. Coconut cream is about 35% fat, which is responsible for making this cake so rich. Because this cake doesn’t contain flour, meaning it has a lower starch content, it doesn’t need as much liquid as European cakes, which is why coconut cream is the only liquid additive here, therefore replacing the dairy and oil.
Thankfully, this cake is almost entirely Plant Paradox-friendly in its traditional form, which means we don’t have to make 100 substitutions to get a similar result. In fact, the only substitutions left to make are to find low-carb sweetener replacements for the sugar and sweetened condensed milk. Luckily, replacing sugar is as easy as swapping it out with an equal amount of Swerve and – wait a second, did you guys check out our Ca Phe Sua Da recipe? There’s a recipe for sugar-free & vegan sweetened condensed milk within that recipe, meaning we now have both the substitutions to make this cake sugar-free!
All that being said, this cake isn’t light in calories, as it’s packed with resistant starches from yucca, healthy saturated fats from coconut cream, and prebiotic fiber from Swerve; being hefty in calories doesn’t make this cake hefty in guilt… if you get what I’m sayin.
Ihob – no wait, – I hope you guys give this new type of cake a try! It may not be light and fluffy, but it’s:
- Sweet & rich
- Chewy & moist
- Sugar-free, vegan, and Plant Paradox-friendly
- Southeast Asian in origin
- A nutrient-dense dessert or on-the-go treat
If you like what your tastebuds are tellin’ ya, leave behind a nice rating, share your thoughts with us in the comments, or show us your creations by tagging @noeggsorham on Instagram.
Yucca-n do it!
Ryan
Banh Khoai Mi - Rich & Sweet Cassava Cake (Plant Paradox-friendly, sugar-free, and vegan)
Freshly grated yucca & coconut cream compose the base of this dense, chewy, and moist cake.
Ingredients
- 1 lb yucca root
- 3/4 c coconut cream
- 1/2 c granular Swerve
- 1/4 c water
- 1/4 c coconut butter*
- 3 tbsp (30 g) tapioca starch
- 2 tbsp sweetened condensed coconut milk
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
- Pre-heat oven to 400° F and lightly coat a cake pan with coconut oil.
- Peel off the the thick brown skin of the yucca root. Then, grate it using either a box grater or the grating insert on a food processor.
- Once grated, place yucca into a cheese cloth or nut milk bag and squeeze to remove as much moisture as possible.
- Transfer drained yucca to a food processor and blend until mostly smooth; about 2 minutes.
- Add the rest of the ingredients into the food processor and puree for another 2 minutes, scraping down the sides once halfway through.
- Transfer batter to prepped cake pan and even out the top with a spatula. Bake in prepped oven for 45 minutes.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes, then transfer cake directly to a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way; about 45 more minutes.
- Slice cake into 8 equal, triangle pieces and enjoy immediately or store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
*Coconut butter is the pureed form of coconut, not to be confused with buttery coconut oil.
NO EGGS OR HAM 
It’s yuca, not yucca. Yucca is an entirely different plant!
Yucca | Definition of Yucca by Merriam-Webster
1: any of a genus (Yucca) of sometimes arborescent plants of the agave family that occur in warm regions chiefly of western North America and have long sword-shaped often stiff fibrous-margined leaves on a usually woody base and bear a large panicle of white blossom.
Yuca: CASSAVA
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Hmm, that’s good to know. I’ve seen it spelled both ways online, so thank you for the clarification!
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I don’t doubt that, Ryan, but if they spell the root vegetable with the double c, they’re wrong!
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Nice one !
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