Vegan Chocolate Cake Recipe
(Inspired by Sweet Sadie)

Here is the story:

Quarantine Baking Challenge #1 - Accepted! Let's get baking some plant-based/vegan treats!

Well, thankfully I’ve been kept busy the past few months through a fun Facebook events organized by my Host Agency, The Travel Agent Next Door Inc. First, we had “The Self-Isolation Game” with weekly challenges and prizes to be won for a variety of different types of events and now a new baking series “All You Knead Is Love” with the Marvellous Mrs Martin has started.

The first challenge was “Sweet Sadie’s* Simple Chocolate Cake” with a fudgy chocolate frosting. Penny’s recipe included eggs & milk and the frosting had a cup of butter. So we’ll have to find appropriate substitutes for each, but these are pretty simple ones for the first challenge.

Penny, our well educated and experienced amateur baker host, is going to walk us through a recipe each week live and then it’s our turn to bake and share our successes (and maybe even some failures) in a competition for prizes and accolades (and probably a few extra pounds too! haha).

Since Vegan Vacations focuses on just that, being vegan, I decided to participate in the challenge but in a way that more align with our business model & core principles. So, I am going to bake a vegan version of each recipe and share the results and final recipe here with you all.

Many of you may be wondering what I’m going to use as my vegan substitutes. Well, I have a lot of options available. Last year for Veganuary, we put together 31 different videos on vegan substitutions for every day normally animal-based food options (mostly food). You can check the list out by clicking here. These are definitely the sort of items I will be using whenever possible to replicate each of the baked goods the Marvellous Mrs Martin inspires us to cooks up. Thank you, Sweet Sadie, for inspiring in Penny the love of baking and teaching.

Here’s our recipe.

Cake Ingredients:

  • 3/4 Dutch Processed Cocoa
  • 1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour 
  • 2 Cups Sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 Flax Eggs (each egg is 1 TBSP ground flax & 2.5 TBSP water)
  • 1 cup plant-based milk of choice (we used unsweetened coconut)
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup boiling water

Process:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a rectangular pan 12x9 inches (See notes below for other ideas)
  2. Mix 2 TBSP of ground flax with 5 TBSP of water in a small bowl and let stand for 5-7 minutes.
  3. Sift the dry ingredients right into your stand mixing bowl.
  4. Mix on ‘low’ speed for a minute or two to combine.
  5. Next, slowly add the oil first, followed by the flax egg mixture (add in one half at a time) and then milk and vanilla. You can turn the speed up to ‘medium’ now.
  6. When the batter is smooth, turn down speed back down to ‘low’ and slowly add boiling water so it incorporates well. The final batter will be quite runny that is what you want. 
  7. Pour batter into your prepared pan(s) and bake for 35-45 minutes. (we ended up going 40 minutes total). 

You will know your cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

You need to then let your cake cool completely before you frost it.

We made the frosting while we waited.


PHOTO: Vegan chocolate cake baking in the oven. (It rises quite quickly with the baking soda).

Vegan Vacations Baking Tip!

Vegan butter will not stay whipped like it’s standard animal-based version so if left to go room temperature it will end up being runny resulting in a not so great frosting for your cake. To combat this we added some vegetable shortening in place of some of the butter in the original recipe so that it will keep its shape and stay firmer when left out of the fridge.

PHOTO: Vegan chocolate frosting.  (Frosting after being whipped by the hand mixer. Don't forget our vegan baking tip).

Frosting Ingredients

  • 6 oz - Dark Chocolate of your choice, chopped coarsely. We used Sea Salt as well as Mint versions in our mix (see note)
  • 1/2-3/4 cup vegan butter
  • 1/4-1/2 cup all-vegetable shortening (see note)
  • 2 cups icing (confectioners) sugar
  • 1 TBSP vanilla extract

The frosting is fairly easy to put together. Here’s how.

  1. Find a small pot and metal bowl that you can use as a double boiler. 
  2. Place a few inches of water into the pot and place it over a "low-medium" heat. Place the bowl into the pot ensuring that it is not touching the water. If it is, pour some of the water out.
  3. Place your chopped chocolate into the bowl and stir as it begins to melt. 
  4. Once it has melted, pull the bowl off off the pot and turn the heat off. Let it cool.
  5. Next, add your vegan butter and shortening into your stand mixer. (see note) Mix on ‘medium’ until light and fluffy.
  6. Turn the speed down to ‘low’ and slowly add the icing sugar about a 1/2 cup at a time until mixed well.
  7. Add the vanilla extract and beat on ‘medium’ for a few more minutes until light and fluffy.

We then put the frosting back into the fridge until the cake was cooled. Just remember to let the frosting come back up to room temperature before you frost so it’s easier to spread. I say pull the frosting out of the fridge about 10-15 minutes before you intend to frost.

Now what I realized as I started frosting was that this cake reminded me completely of those Duncan Hines, “Deep & Delicious” cakes I used to eat whenever I happened upon them at the grocery store. I loved those cakes.

So I frosted it a bit like those cakes with a wave style pattern and then left it in the fridge overnight to enjoy this evening.

This will forever be known as Jay’s Vegan “Deep & Delicious” Cake inspired by Penny & Sadie!

Let me know what you think of this recipe if you make it yourself and of course “pictures or it didn’t happen!” lol

PHOTO: Freshly frosted vegan chocolate cake; ready to go into the fridge for another 30-45 minutes to firm up.


PHOTO: Piece of frosted vegan chocolate cake on the table ready to eat.

NOTES:

  • You can make this recipe without a stand mixer easily.
  • We thought it could be a great idea to split the mix between two (2) round pie pins and make a double-layered cake. Make sure to adjust your frosting amount though as you’ll want to put some between each layer.
  • A standard Lindt chocolate bar is about 3.5 oz so we used two in this recipe which made things even more chocolatey. (yum!)
  • We used 3/4 cup vegan butter and about 1/34 cup shortening this time but you could go as high as half and half if you’d prefer a stiffer icing.

If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can mix the frosting with a hand mixer but you may need to mix it for a bit longer.

*Sadie is Penny’s mom!