Today we celebrated another family birthday. I decided to make another vegan chocolate cake, and tried a different recipe, by blogger Kate Hackworthy. This one looked more like a normal recipe (albeit no eggs) with a more normal amount of sugar. It said it wouldn’t be dry and crumbly…read on and find out if the claims were justified.
The ingredients were straightforward. I had to buy some vegan margarine specially but otherwise everything was in the store cupboard. Even the agave syrup ( I’m on trend like that!). I even still had some oat milk from another recipe – a vegan lasagne. Can’t write about that here because it’s not cake though.
It all mixed up easily and looked like ordinary cake. So far so good. I followed the recipe closely – weighed and measured everything. I baked it for precisely 30 minutes. I rested it in the tin for the exact time stated. And then I turned the cakes out of the tins – and near disaster. One cake cracked in 3 pieces. One cake split in 2.
That was yesterday. I let them cool overnight and today I sandwiched them together and iced them. When I say sandwiched them together – I glued them together. I didn’t use the ‘butter’cream as suggested in the recipe. I made a ganache as for the first vegan chocolate cake I did (see previous post a while back) by melting 250g of dark vegan chocolate (from Lidl – the best ever chocolate) and mixing some oat milk in.
Just before serving I decorated the cake with totally out of season strawberries and raspberries, and a sprinkle of edible gold glitter. Then we had 2 photo opportunities – one with a candle and one with little star sparklers. Couldn’t light them all together though so it wasn’t the effect I was looking for really!
Verdict? Lovely flavour. Fairly moist. Crumbly. Definitely crumbly. Not sure I would do this one again. But – fear not – I have another recipe sent to me by my sister to try. There will be a vegan chocolate cake version 3 at some point. I am now determined to crack this before the end of the year.
Eat Cake And Run 