Vegan Chocolate Cake
Without a doubt one of the easiest cake recipes to follow - ever!
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups plain flour
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup vegan sugar (or less, depending on how sweet you like your cake)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
5 tablespoons cooking oil (my preference is rice bran oil)
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 cup cold water
Serves 6-8.
Preheat oven to 355˚F (180˚C).
In a large bowl sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, sugar and salt.
Make 3 holes in the dry ingredients. Put vanilla essence into one, oil into another and cider vinegar into the third. Pour cold water over the top. Mix only enough to combine all ingredients.
Pour the batter into a greased parchment paper lined 8 inch (20cm) round pan.
Bake for 30 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.
Leave in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.
Serve warm with fresh fruit or any one of the delicious frosting recipes listed.
As an added bonus, try out this delicious frosting to compliment any type of baked chocolaty treat!
2oz (60g) unsweetened chocolate
¼ cup peanut butter
3-4 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup confectioners' sugar
Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting: In a heavy saucepan, melt the chocolate over medium a heat.
Beat together the peanut butter, water and vanilla until smooth.
Beat in the confectioner's sugar, and add melted chocolate, mixing until blended.
Spread the frosting on cooled cake.
Vegan Q&A
Q. Is confectioners' sugar vegan?
A. Confectioners' sugar (or powdered sugar) is granulated sugar that has been crushed into a fine powder that could be derived from either sugar beets or cane sugar. The issue here for many vegan's is that cane sugar, in its refinement, is subjected to a filtration process that may contain carbon (charcoal) of animal origin. As it is almost impossible to determine the origins (beet or cane) or processes involved in making confectioners' sugar, many vegan's decide to avoid all forms of white table sugar. Alternatively, some vegan's believe that if it is a plant based food, whether processded or not, and does not contain any overt animal products or by-products, then it should be considered vegan. Ultimately, the choice in this instance becomes one of personal choice.