Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based

Undoubtedly the easiest vegan cake ever

To make the dark chocolate cake below, you use a dead simple recipe that you can literally get done in an hour. Truly a cake for beginners with no baking experience.
The result is a deeply dark, juicy cake with the bitter flavour of dark chocolate. However, we do not use chocolate for it, but rather raw cocoa.

What ingredients do you need?

It is unimaginably simple. Just 5 ingredients, at least, if you leave out the water.

200 g sieved flour
130 g (or ml) of neutral-tasting oil you can fry with (e.g.: sunflower oil)
70 g sieved (raw) unsweetened cocoa
100 to 180 g whole, unrefined sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
500 ml boiling water

About the sugar: The original recipe specified 180 g of whole cane sugar. I reduced that, as I often do, to almost half (100 g), and used coconut blossom sugar. So adjust that according to your preferences.
As for the flour: I used a mixture of semi-whole and white wheat flour. That way, you get still some extra minerals and fibre in the cake.

This is how to prepare it:

It couldn’t be simpler:

Preheat your oven to 180°C (or 170°C for an oven with hot air circulation).
Grease a round baking tin of about 20 to 24 cm with some oil or line the bottom and edges with baking paper.
Mix the 4 dry ingredients flour, cocoa, baking powder and sugar in a bowl.
Then pour in the oil, stirring a little.
Finally, pour in the hot water and mix to a homogeneous, fairly liquid batter.
Pour the batter into the lined tin.
Bake for about 30 minutes at the bottom of your oven.
Let cool and remove from the springform pan.
Garnish with a topping of your choice

An example for a vegan topping:

For a luscious vegan top layer with chocolate and coconut flavouring:

Mix about 100 ml of canned coconut milk (17-23% fat content) with two tablespoons of cocoa and two tablespoons of agave syrup or whole (cane or coconut) sugar.
Spread this chocolate coconut cream on top of the cake.
Garnish with fruit such as berries or banana slices if desired.
Finally, put the cake in the fridge for one and a half to two hours.
Take it out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Simple as that. This vegan cake certainly rivals its traditional counterpart in flavour and is remarkably moist thanks to the water. The texture is somewhat reminiscent of a flan, another archaeological find from my Flemish childhood.
Enjoy!
I found inspiration for this recipe at “The Happy Pear” from Ireland. Their website is full of delicious and healthy vegan recipes.

Do I need butter and eggs to bake cake?

The answer is no, of course.
Traditional cake such as the famous “quatre quarts” from French cuisine, always uses the following ingredients:

White flour
Butter
Eggs
Refined sugar

Okay, cake is not something you eat every day. It’s fun food. But the above list shows that the resulting classic cake is quite a chore for the body to digest as well as metabolise. The white flour, refined sugar and butter are high in calories but very, not to say totally “empty” of nutrients. The eggs provide a lot of cholesterol. We are so conditioned by the traditional pastries of our childhood. The above vegan recipe is very basic and consists of just 5 ingredients.
Opting for vegan pastries is good for your health, the environment and animals. It just takes the courage and initiative to step outside the known paths.

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Simple vegan chocolate cake