Our PAGU Decadent Dark Chocolate Cake is delicious! It also happens to be gluten-free and vegan. The original inspiration came from Chef Tracy’s cousin Jocelyn, who grew up with many food allergies (shellfish, dairy, gluten, eggs, you name it). When Jocelyn was a teenager, she had never had cake before so Tracy, then a young cook and aspiring chef, decided to bake her one. Turns out, the chocolate cake was really tasty, possibly tastier than classic recipes Tracy had tasted before. The recipe is one that has been on the PAGU menu since we opened in 2016.

In fall 2023, we decided to look into the science of our chocolate cake recipe with the students at Harvard Science and Cooking. We took a classic chocolate cake recipe made with eggs, butter, milk, and wheat flour (A) and compared it with our recipe (B) which uses tofu, oil, soy milk and gluten-free flours (brown rice flour, rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch). We also created recipe (C) which was the same as (B) except in place of coffee it used shiitake broth. Here is the link to our powerpoint presentation and here is the YouTube link (coming soon) to our video presentation. TLDR, the results were quite similar across the board when we examined 1) the cross-section of the baked cakes 2) the bubble structure of the baked cakes under a microscope. When we polled the audience of 200+ guests in a blind taste test we asked them to 1) vote for the best tasting 2) see if they could guess which cake was which recipe. The overwhelming majority (95%+) chose our PAGU recipe as the most delicious. They also guessed that it contained shiitake dashi, but it did not. Interesting!

Since then we have taken the show on the road, including lectures at MIT and blind cake tastings at WGBH. The PAGU recipe continues to be a big hit, hence our excitement in serving it at the restaurant for dine-in, takeout, PAGU market and now in packaging it as a dry mix!

With the dry mix, we encourage you to play around with the wet ingredients with the following substitutions:

milk = alternative milk (oat, rice, coconut almond, macadamia, cashew)

eggs = silken tofu, applesauce, mashed banana

coffee = shiitake broth, carob infusion,

butter = neutral oil (canola, vegetable, grapeseed, avocado)

Other notes:

-If you are baking an 8” round, depending on if your oven runs hot or cool, you may need to adjust your bake time and temperature. I have a Wolf Convection Oven at home and bake it at 350f on convection, center rack, 35-40 minutes. Some folks have indicated that it takes 55 minutes in their home ovens.

-If you are baking a thinner cake say in a sheet tray, you will want to adjust your baking time accordingly. In my Wolf oven, it is 30-35 minutes.