↑

Premeditated Leftovers™

Prep-Ahead Meals, Cooking Tips, and Frugal Living


You are here: Home / Gluten-Free Flavor-Full / Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake

Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake

by 9 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy here.

This gluten-free Earthquake Cake recipe easy to make and can be served in the pan you baked it in making it easy to take to potlucks.

gluten-free earthquake cake recipe

Have you ever had an Earthquake Cake? They are amazingly delicious! Coconut, pecans, and molten cream cheese lava bursting through the fissures in the chocolate cake. One of my friends describes this cake as a “chocolate love bomb”. If you haven't had Earthquake Cake before, you want to put it on your to-try list.

Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake

Earthquake cakes are usually made by doctoring a packaged cake mix, but I decided to make a Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake from scratch by adapting my gluten-free chocolate cake recipe because the only way to improve on this cake would be to make it entirely from scratch!

GlutenFree Earthquake Cake (425x312)

The first layer is coconut and pecans. You pour the chocolate cake mix over the coconut and pecans.

Earthquake Cake - gluten-free recipe (425x260)

Drop tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture onto the cake mix and then run a knife through it to spread it throughout the cake mix.

Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake recipe with coconut, pecans and cream cheese filling (425x283)

The finished product isn't exactly pretty. In fact, we sometimes call this a volcanic explosion cake. But what it lacks in looks, it more than makes up for with the flavorful combination of ingredients.

Printable Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake Recipe

5.0 from 1 reviews
Gluten-Free Earthquake Cake
 
Print
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • ¾ cup white rice flour
  • ¾ cup tapioca flour
  • ¼ cup potato starch
  • 1 teaspoon guar gum
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 2 cups sugar
  • ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • ⅔ cup oil
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • ½ cup milk (or rice milk)
  • 1 teaspoon gf vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup shredded coconut
  • 1 cup pecans chopped
  • 4 oz. of cream cheese, softened
  • 4 oz. of butter, melted
  • 2 cups powdered sugar
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9 Baking Dish.
  2. Mix the coconut and pecans together. Sprinkle the coconut mixture on the bottom of the baking dish:
  3. In a large bowl combine white rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, guar gum, and sugar.
  4. Place cocoa in a small bowl. Pour the boiling water over the cocoa.
  5. Add oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla to the cocoa mixture.
  6. Add the liquids to the flour mixture and beat for 2 –3 minutes on high.
  7. Pour over the coconut mixture.
  8. Blend the butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar together.
  9. Drop by the tablespoon full on top of the cake mix:
  10. I take a knife and run it between the lumps of the cream cheese mixture.
  11. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pan placed on top of a wire rack.

More Gluten-Free Cake Recipes:

This recipe is shared at Gluten-Free Wednesdays and Allergy-Free Wednesday.

About Alea Milham

Alea Milham is the owner of Premeditated Leftovers and the author of Prep-Ahead Meals from Scatch. She shares her tips for saving money and time while reducing waste in her home. Her favorite hobby, gardening, is a frugal source of organic produce for her recipes. She believes it is possible to live fully and eat well while spending less.

Comments

  2. April @ The 21st Century Housewife says

    March 24, 2013 at 4:31 am

    This sounds so delicious! I’ve always hesitated to make it because of the cake mix, so this will be a fun recipe for me to try 🙂

    Reply

  3. Linda says

    March 26, 2013 at 5:03 pm

    This looks amazingly good, Alea. I’ve never had an earthquake cake–gluten free or otherwise. Thanks for sharing it at Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

    Reply

  4. Mykel says

    May 14, 2013 at 7:01 am

    Hi. Thanks this looks amazing! Question, can the
    •¾ cup white rice flour
    •¾ cup tapioca flour
    •¼ cup potato starch
    •1 teaspoon guar gum
    Be replaced with a gf all purpose flour, if so how much? And I would still need the baking powder right?

    Reply

    • Alea Milham says

      May 14, 2013 at 7:09 am

      You should be able to replace the white rice flour, tapioca flour and potato starch and guar gum with 1 3/4 cup gf all-purpose flour. You would still need to add baking powder. I hope you enjoy the cake!

      Reply

  5. Shard says

    April 27, 2014 at 5:53 pm

    Wowsers! I am so excited to try this! It looks like the kind of sneaky delight that my Dad would love and never know it’s Gluten Free. Thanks!

    Reply

  6. Florrey says

    May 15, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    Hi Alea,

    I’ve never heard of Earthquake Cake before, but yesterday I stumbled over this amazing looking cake on Pinterest – but since I’m a purist baker that doesn’t like cake mixes AND a gf eating friend came visiting today I googled and stumbled over your recipe and the cake blew us all away, sooo delicious! <3
    I used an all-purpose gf flour consisting of potato starch, corn starch, corn flour, rice flour and guar gum, which worked fine, and chopped almonds because it's really difficult to get plain pecan nuts in German supermarkets, which also tasted great. But the absolute best ist the caramelized chewy-crunchy crust of the topping!
    The only thing that did confuse me a bit was the amount of loose coconut shreds under the cake. It's probably more than half of the amount that didn't stuck to the dough. Is that normal or did I make something wrong? Next time, I would probably use only 1/2 cup.

    Anyway, thank you soooo much for this amazing recipe! <3

    Reply

    • Alea Milham says

      May 15, 2017 at 10:03 pm

      Hi,

      I am so glad you enjoyed this cake recipe. The coconut usually gets embedded in the bottom of the cake. I am not sure why it didn’t happen on yours. I usually use the sweetened shredded coconut found in American stores. I just said shredded coconut in the recipe – not aware of all the different types that existed when I wrote this recipe. Perhaps that could be the cause?

      I definitely need to update this old recipe and take new pictures. Thanks for the inspiration. If I think of anything when I am updating the recipes, I will let you know. ~Alea

      Reply

      • Florrey says

        May 18, 2017 at 2:54 am

        Hi Alea,

        thank you for the reply! Looking at the Pictures again I also think that it depends on the different Kind of coconut. Here in Germany, you don’t get sweetened coconut at all, maybe the sugar caramalizes and adds to sticking to the cake bottom? Additionally, the shreds I used were extremely fine, I’ll try to get larger shreds next time so that there is more “space” between them so that maybe the dough will flow into the gaps? If I don’t find it, I’ll just stick with only half the amount 😉

        Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rate this recipe:  

Welcome. I'm Alea!

On Premeditated Leftovers I share simple recipes made with whole foods, practical shopping tips, time saving techniques, and meal planning strategies. I also share tips for minimizing food waste, so more of the food that is purchased ends up on the table.

While volunteering as a budget counselor, I realized that food is the element of most people’s budgets where they have the greatest control. I set out to develop low-cost recipes from scratch to prove it’s possible to create delicious meals on a limited budget. Eating well while spending less is about more than just creating recipes using inexpensive ingredients; it’s about creatively combining ingredients so you don’t feel deprived and are inspired to stick to your budget.
shares