It’s been slightly more than three months since Juan and I returned to Buenos Aires from Washington, DC, and during the time since we’ve been back, we’ve been staying temporarily at Juan’s mum’s place, and are literally living out of our suitcases.
A quick count shows that we’ve lived in at least five different apartments in the same amount of years – moving from Buenos Aires to New York to DC and now back to Buenos Aires again.
We live a rather nomadic life, in my father’s very words, and while it sure is exciting to constantly be moving to new cities or new neighborhoods, it can get tiring not to have a base at times.
In the past few months, we’ve been on the hunt for an apartment to rent – and this search has often felt endless. As with most of our apartment hunts (yes, we’ve been through quite a few), we’ve come to the practical and realistic conclusion that the perfect apartment doesn’t exist. What does exist though, is an apartment that’s almost perfect, and that fits into the top end of our budget.
At first, we were torn between choosing a fully-furnished apartment or an empty one – because we don’t know how long we’ll be staying here in Argentina in the end.
But finally, we decided that not only would it be financially smarter in the longer run to get an unfurnished place, but we would finally be able to create a home with furniture that we actually love and choose for ourselves.
You see, we’ve lived in so many furnished apartments in the past five years – which are no doubt convenient – but we’ve reached a point of furnished-apartment-saturation (if there’s such a thing).
While having to buy our own furniture may require a larger investment upfront, my excel spreadsheet tells me that after about six to seven months it would definitely be cheaper. Most importantly, at this stage we’re so darn ready to build our space from scratch at last.
I’ve been compiling ideas on Pinterest for inspiration (check out my Pinterest board if you like!), googling minimalist Scandinavian decor ideas, searching for furniture both online and off. Juan has given me free reign to work on the interior design and decoration, so you can imagine how crazy excited I am!!
At this time of writing, we’re in the process of submitting documents for approval for an apartment in the chic and trendy Palermo neighborhood, and it finally feels like we will (very) soon have a place we can call our own.
In the meanwhile, in between waiting for our apartment and browsing the Internet for a million decoration ideas, I’m going to share this amazing chocolate coconut cake recipe I made when we were still in DC.
At first, I wasn’t planning on shooting this recipe for the blog, but because we’ve made it a bunch of times already and it always comes out perfect, I thought, good things just have to be shared!
Slightly adapted from the King Arthur Flour recipe, this cake recipe is possibly one of the easiest and delicious gluten-free cakes to make, with a base of high-fibre, low-carb coconut flour, and sweetened with a sugar alternative that’s my new best friend – monk fruit sweetener.
If you’ve never tried monk fruit sweetener before, I’d say now is as good a time as any to do so. This Lakanto monk fruit sweetener has zero calories and also zero glycemic index, which basically means it doesn’t impact your blood sugar at all.
That means, diabetics, those who are insulin-resistant, and anyone who wants to cut down on their sugar intake can eat it without worries!
The best part of it is that you can replace regular sugar with equal quantities of this monk fruit sweetener, so no complicated recipe calculation conversions need to be made.
This chocolate coconut cake is incredible moist, absolutely decadent, and tastes so darn good topped with fresh berries and sprinkled with coconut chips. You’re definitely going to love it! Go on and bake it today!
Chocolate Coconut Cake (Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free)
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 35 mins
- Total Time: 50 mins
- Yield: 8 1x
Description
Moist, deliciously decadent chocolate cake made with coconut flour. The perfect dessert that’s both Paleo-friendly and gluten-free!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 6 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
- 1/2 cup raw cacao powder
- 3/4 cup monkfruit sweetener
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 large eggs
- Toasted coconut chips, for garnish, optional
- Fresh raspberries for accompanying, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 ºF (180°C) and grease and line an 8-inch round cake pan.
- In a medium bowl, sift the coconut flour and baking powder together, and mix well to combine.
- In a large bowl, melt the coconut oil and mix in the raw cacao powder, stirring until well blended.
- Whisk the monk fruit sweetener, vanilla extract, eggs, and salt into the coconut oil-cacao mixture and mix well.
- Add the coconut flour-baking powder mixture to the bowl with the wet ingredients and whisk very well until you get a smooth and homogeneous batter. Let the batter rest for 10 minutes to allow the coconut flour to absorb some of the moisture.
- Transfer the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Allow the cake to cool completely in the pan for at least 30 minutes before removing (this is important as the cake with continuing cooking with the residual heat, and a cooled cake is also easier to slice).
- Slice the cake into pieces and garnish with coconut chips and fresh raspberries.
Notes
Adapted from King Arthur Flour
- Category: Dessert
This sounds fun.
★★★★★