Perfect Gluten Free Vegan Chocolate Birthday Cake

I'll go ahead and preface this with:  I don't decorate cakes.  I certainly frost them, but making them fancy and beautiful to look at?  Not my forté.  So, the cake may look a little sloppy...but that's just because I took under 2 minutes frosting the cake....really.  My real calling is in how things taste.  And let me tell you..vegan, gluten-free....whatever this cake is...the bottom line: it is divinely moist, chocolaty, and oh so delicious.  It happens to be much healthier than your average cake, and FAR more delicious in my humble opinion.  If you need a birthday cake free of every major allergen and don't want anyone to know it...this is it.  The decorating part?  Well...you can spend as much time as YOU want!!  I started with a recipe from The Whole Life Nutrition blog.  My kids gobbled it up, and I bet you will too!

2 cups brown rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I love Dagoba)
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons guar gum
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 cups boiling water w/  1 cup prunes pureed OR 12oz prune baby food (this is what I used)
½ cup canola oil
1 cup agave nectar

1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease 2 9" cake pans.  You could certainly do this is any shape you wanted: bundt, rectangle, etc.  In a mixer, beat the prune puree, oil, agave, sugar, vinegar, and vanilla.  With the mixer running, sprinkle in the salt, soda, and guar gum.  Continue with the cocoa, tapioca and brown rice flours.  Batter should look like a typical cake batter.  Pour into prepared pans.  Bake for about 25-30 minutes until knife inserted in center comes out clean.  Let it cool a couple of minutes, and invert the cakes on a wire rack to cool completely. Frost when cool (If you are doing a more fancy frosting job, freezing the cake first makes it easier to work with!

Frosting:  In a mixer, beat until fluffy:

1 cup Spectrum Shortening 
4 tablespoons Earth Balance Buttery Spread
1/2 cup arrowroot powder (around $5/pound in natural food stores by the rest of the flours!) I imagine tapioca or potato starch could work too.
1 cup powdered sugar  (Whole Foods Brand and Safeway's O Organics are corn free), you could add more if you like it sweeter, but me and the kids loved this as is)
1/2 cup agave
2 teaspoons vanilla


This is one frosting, but I have used others w/ just powdered sugar, shortening, and margarine, a typical vegan buttercream, this one from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.