2-Ingredient No-Bake Cake Bites

April 3, 2017 · Natalie 37 Comments

These No-Bake Cake Bites are the easiest, instant vanilla cake in snack ball form made with just 2 ingredients–a quick healthy vegan and paleo treat!

When it comes to coconut flour, it’s a love-hate relationship. Actually make that love-dislike–hate is a bit too strong for anything so innocently inanimate and edible.

I dislike when I have to be the bearer of bad news and tell someone that no, coconut flour cannot be subbed into [insert any FOF recipe name here] for the oat flour to make it paleo.

I dislike when it turns a potential recipe experiment into crumbles of a potential recipe experiment. Sad, dry, crumbles.

I dislike when I see it doing amazing, fluffy, grain-free things on Pinterest and then I try them myself and there is nothing amazing or fluffy about it. You temperamental trickster of a flour.

And for a while there I just plain and simply disliked the taste, but it’s grown on me.

On the other hand, I love when it can recreate my favorite Easter candy–adorable, no-bake, chocolate-squiggled style.

I love what it does to oatmeal when added just before it’s done cooking.

I love how little you have to use, so one bag lasts for a looooooong time.

I love that it’s grain-free and gluten-free and actually contains a considerable amount of fiber and protein compared to most flours.

And I especially love the unbelievable light baked texture it gives these cake bites when combined with just one other amazing ingredient!

Hence 2-ingredient No-Bake Cake Bites.

That other ingredient is date paste. Of course. With all the weirdo flours around here lately we need a little FOF predictability, don’t you think? It’s the sweet familiar yin to coconut flour’s dry crumbly yang. Also coconut flour absorbs a lot of moisture and date paste is half water, so it just works.

To make a dozen of these morsels requires one cup of date paste (which is pretty much an entire batch if you follow the amounts in my tutorial -> here) and between 1/2 and 3/4 cup coconut flour. The amount will vary slightly depending on how thick your date paste is, that’s why I recommend adding the flour slowly until you reach the ideal texture. Too little flour and it will be too moist/mushy to roll. Too much flour and it will be too crumbly to hold. It’s not as tricky as it sounds, just trust your no-bake cake bite intuition.

And when you nail the texture and roll them into balls and eat at least one immediately because nobody has time for that chilling nonsense, you will be amazed by how cake-reminiscent they are. They will become a little firmer after chilling, and last quite well in the fridge for 4 or 5 days without much change in moisture or texture.

Optional add-ins. Date paste and coconut flour are the only necessary ingredients, but there are a couple of optional additions for extra flavor. Vanilla because it’s the classic cake flavor. And salt because sweet things are better with salt, especially no-bake ones.

So that makes them fruit-sweetened 2-ingredient No-Bake Cake Bites.

Trust me, I too am super jazzed about how crazy easy and crazy yummy and crazy cute these little ~~balls~~ ~~bites~~ spheres-of-sweetness are. SUPER jazzed. But you know what might be my favorite part about using coconut flour in this recipe? Any guesses?

It’s the fact that a lil extra coconut flour smudged on the outside makes them glisten as if they are sugar-dusted. I did not plan that. But I love that.

It was actually a happy surprise I only noticed after staring at them through my viewfinder and taking a kajillion shots on bazillion different colored towels because I couldn’t quite figure out what color pairs perfectly with this shade of instant bite-sized cake. Still not sure, but I can tell you it is NOT yellow, tan, pink, off-white, or blue striped. Definitely not.

Using oat flour. Now since I know some of you probably fall more towards the dislike side of the coconut flour relationship, I tested these little balls-o-bliss with oat flour as well. I need to be honest with you though–they are not as good. Not even close. Sorry, but it’s the truth. Oat flour just doesn’t have the cake-texture magic that coconut flour does. But if you insist…

For the same amount of date paste, it takes a LOT more oat flour than coconut. More than double. Because it takes so much more flour, the texture is not as light and baked-like and they dry out much faster. While I don’t recommend this swap, it is possible.

So that brings us to grain-free (or not) fruit-sweetened 2-ingredient No-Bake Cake Bites. And tack the word vegan in there somewhere too if you like. You can see why I had to condense.

Last week it was banana flour, this week coconut flour, who knows what sort of funky new flour next week might bring. Actually I know. I know and I’m excited!