I HEART CAKE
The new Scared Wheatless cookbook includes a chickpea-based chocolate delight,
Mary Jo Eustace and her 10-yearold daughter Lola breeze into the test kitchen with heads full of gorgeous hair.
Mary Jo’s is thick, straight and blond. Lola’s is thick, straight, black and a little longer. Both manes hit that sweet spot around the small of the back.
And what exactly does hair have to do with the chocolate chickpea cake they’ve come to decorate?
Well, Mary Jo wrote the just-released Scared Wheatless: Delicious Gluten-Free Recipes That Won’t Make You Lose Your Mind about what happened when Lola’s hair started to fall out three years ago this Halloween.
She was diagnosed with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that attacks and destroys healthy body tissue by mistake — in this case, hair follicles. The cause is unknown but doctors suspect a combination of genes and triggers.
Mary Jo dove into researching the disease and discovered, anecdotally at least, that “avoiding gluten, eating clean and getting rid of the crap in our diet” can help. The hair loss hit her hard. “We’re so hair-obsessed in this culture,” declares Mary Jo, who did hair campaigns as a young model and who’s poised to launch a skin and hair care line on the Shopping Network. “I used to make my living off my hair.”
The “pit bull of a mom” — admittedly neither a doctor nor a nutritionist — decided to see if glutenfree eating could help Lola.
“We lost around 60 to 70 per cent of her hair,” she remembers with a shudder. “I even hate talking about it.”
They went wig shopping, just in case. But Lola never went entirely bald and, remarkably, was never teased or bullied at her elementary school. The gluten-free regime seems to have worked. The alopecia is gone and Lola’s hair is stunning.
Mother and daughter come to the Star to promote Scared Wheatless and make one of the two desserts in the book. It’s a dense chocolate chickpea cake, created by a boutique grocer called the Market in Lakefield near the Eustace family cottage.
I’ve baked and cooled the twolayer cake so the Eustaces can ice and decorate it.
Mary Jo, her daughter and her 17-year-old son Jack McDermott are back in her hometown of Toronto for the year so she can explore work opportunities.
They have been living in Los Angeles, where Mary Jo wrote Divorce Sucks: What to do when irreconcilable differences, lawyer fees, and your ex’s Hollywood Wife make you miserable after her husband Dean McDermott famously left her for Tori Spelling.
Enough about all that. On to the cake.
A poised and confident Lola eagerly makes chocolate icing from cocoa and butter and decorates judiciously with Jolly Ranchers, Smarties, Gummi bears and sprinkles.
“Lola’s a very good designer,” boasts her proud mom.
Mary Jo — who is also an actress and singer — is best known here for What’s for Dinner and He Said, She Said, two cooking TV shows with the late Ken Kostick.
She dove into her gluten-free research, literally dreamed up the title to Scared Wheatless, quickly landed a book deal with Vancouver-based Whitecap Books and kid-tested the recipes in 2014.
“We had kids over and my friend, he is obsessed with broccoli,” remembers Lola. “Literally if he could live off broccoli the rest of his life he would. My mom’s broccoli soup (the Easiest Broccoli Soup Ever) — he said it was the best thing ever.”
Her brother Jack, it must be said, felt the gluten-free experiment was “a food conspiracy” destined to ruin his life, but came around to some dishes like Jack’s Deviled Eggs and Brussels Sprouts Heaven.
Meanwhile, Magical Mustard Salad with Dijon Mustard Lemon Swirl is a favourite of Mary Jo and Lola.
This is a family that eats well. But, now that Lola has recovered, they probably only eat gluten-free a reasonable 75 to 80 per cent of the time.
In the case of this cake, they’ve brought in bulk candy to help decorate it without worrying about cross-contamination like people who are strictly gluten-free would.
“Is your masterpiece complete?” Mary Jo asks. “Do you want to fill in your heart?”
“Yes — with gold,” replies Lola, reaching for edible gold flakes and sprinkling them in a heart made of Jolly Ranchers.
“I think if you put one more thing on it, that’s going to be a heart attack,” warns Mary Jo.
“It’s perfect,” responds Lola. “See — I am a good designer.”
They share a few small bites of cake.
Chocolate Chickpea Cake
3 Star Tested Dense and delicious, this two-layer cake from Scared Wheatless is wheat-free and extra moist. You can use one 10-inch (25-centimetre) springform pan if you prefer, boosting the cooking time by about 10 minutes.
If you don’t want icing, Mary Jo Eustace suggests crème fraîche or Greek yogurt with fresh fruit, or fresh fruit combined with a drizzle of maple syrup and sprinkling of crushed pistachios. For this photo, Eustace’s daughter Lola decorated with candy. Cake: Three, 19-oz (540-mL) cans
chickpeas, drained, rinsed (about 6 cups) 6 large eggs 2 cups (500 mL) granulated sugar 1/2 cup (125 mL) cocoa powder 2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder Icing: 2 cups (500 mL) unsalted butter at room temperature, or nonhydrogenated margarine
1 cup (250 mL) each: cocoa powder,
icing sugar For cake, in food processor, combine chickpeas, eggs, sugar, cocoa and baking powder.
Process until smooth, about 3 minutes. (This makes about 6 cups of batter, so depending on the size of your food processor you may need to do this in two batches.)
Pour into two 9-inch (23-centimetre), greased or non-stick round cake pans.
Bake in preheated 350 F (180 C) oven until toothpick inserted in centre comes out fairly clean, about 50 minutes.
Cool cakes in pans 15 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.
For icing, in food processor, combine butter or margarine, cocoa and icing sugar. Process until smooth. Place one cake on plate or cake stand and slather with icing using an offset icing spatula or rubber spatula.
Place second cake on top and slather with icing.
Makes 12 to 16 servings. jbain@thestar.ca