This vegan chocolate cake recipe by award-winning cook Anna Jones, is not only irresistibly tasty, it’s super simple to make too. Taken from her new book One Pot, Pan, Planet
IMAGE: ISSY CROKER
My insatiable sweet tooth knows almost no bounds, so cake is something I take very seriously. This dense, gooey (and incidentally vegan) chocolate cake made with coconut oil is as much of a hit with my two-year-old as it is with my vegan brother. It was passed onto me by a kind American friend, hence oil rather than butter in the batter. It is such an easy cake to make: no creaming, no sifting. Be sure to use a tight-fitting cake tin, as the batter is quite wet and will run out if there are any gaps.
Chocolate & Muscovado Fudge Cake
Ingredients
For the icing
- 100 g olive, coconut or vegetable oil
- 65 g dark muscovado sugar
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 200 g dark chocolate finely chopped
For the cake
- 200 g plain or light spelt flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
- 75 g cocoa powder
- 250 g dark muscovado sugar
- 75 g olive, coconut or vegetable oil plus extra for greasing
- 1 ½ teaspoons vinegar (I use cider)
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease a 20cm round springform cake tin with oil and line the base with baking paper.
- Put all the icing ingredients except the chocolate into a saucepan with 60ml cold water. Heat until everything is melted, making sure the mixture doesn’t boil, then turn off the heat, add the chocolate at once and leave it to sit. After about a minute, the chocolate should have melted. Whisk until you have a thick icing and set aside. It should be cool by the time the cake has baked and cooled.
- For the cake, whisk the flour, bicarbonate of soda, a good pinch of sea salt and the cocoa together in a bowl. Make sure there are no lumps of bicarbonate of soda.
- In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, 375ml of just-boiled water, the oil and vinegar. Stir the mixture into the dry ingredients, then pour into the prepared tin (it will be quite a wet batter). Bake for 30-40 minutes.
- When it is ready, the cake should have pulled away from the edges of the tin and a skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean. Cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Spoon over the icing and decorate as you like.
Notes
- grated chocolate
- fresh flowers
- chopped candied nuts
- chopped stem ginger
- crumbled chocolate
- flakes of sea salt
Recipe taken from One Pot, Pan, Planet: A Greener Way To Cook For You, Your Family and the Planet by Anna Jones. Photography by Issy Croker, published by Fourth Estate. RRP £26
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