Super Yummy Chocolate Cake

Finding easy cake recipes can sometimes be tough, and finding one that is vegan and gluten free while still being super tasty is even harder.

This is one of my favourite recipes for two reasons:
– Everything happens in the same bowl; mixing, baking, serving. So there are no extra dishes that need cleaning
– It’s easy to convert to Gluten free or Vegan.

Cake 
3c flour (I like Dove’s farm – Gluten Free White Flour Blend)
2c sugar (Unrefined Demera is great for this)
½tsp salt
5Tbls cocoa powder
1tsp bi-carb
½c oil (any vegetable or seed oil will work, stay away from Olive)
2Tbls vinegar (any white vinegar, spirit, white wine, etc stay away from Balsamic)
3tsp vanilla essence/ 1tsp vanilla paste
2c water

20160428_160658Pre heat the oven to 180ºC. Put the dry ingredients into the dish you plan to bake and serve the cake in (approx 35x25cm) and mix well.

20160428_161235Make three holes in the dry ingredients and add the oil, vinegar and water to each hole, sprinkling the vanilla on top. Mix well but work quickly.

Bake for 20-25 min or until a skewer comes out clean.

For the Icing
½c butter or dairy free substitute
4Tbls cocoa powder
3Tbls water
1½c icing sugar

Once the cake comes out the oven, mix the ingredients together and pour over the top of the cake while it is still cooling so that it sinks in and turn the whole cake into a gooey chocolate delight.

Can be served hot as a pudding with ice-cream as soon as you’ve added the icing, or leave it to cool completely and serve it cold as a cake.

Enjoy

Notes

  • working quickly to mix the wet and dry ingredients is key, as the minute the vinegar hits the mixture it will react with the bicarb
  • the wider your dish the faster the mixture will cook, and therefore the narrower the dish the longer it will take. So keep an eye on it

Variations

  • substituting 2tbls of the water for coffee, gives the cake a richer flavour
  • substituting 1 cup of flour for 1 cup ground almonds
  • substituting ½cup flour for ½cup desiccated coconut
  • add ½cup of roughly chopped dried sour cherries or blueberries (don’t use fresh fruit) to the dry mix to give some variety to the mix
  • this can be used for a vanilla cake
    • in the cake mix substitute the cocoa powder for flour
    • for the icing substitute the cocoa powder for icing sugar and add 1tsp of vanilla extract
Emma Klein