On Saturday afternoon, I was bored. We didn’t have much to do, the housework was mostly done and the kids were just doing their own thing. We didn’t have much in the cupboards, but I decided to have a rummage around to see what I could find. Two things I did happen upon were a bag of unopened cacao powder and some dessicated coconut, both of which had been bought for other projects, but never used.
I wanted to have a go at making a cake, but we didn’t have any eggs in the house, so I decided to see if I could knock up a decent vegan cake without going to the shops for ingredients. It turned out that not only could I do it, but it tasted GOOOOOD!
The cake part was chewy and dense and super coconutty and the chocolate icing that I made for the outside was so rich and delicious that I’m thinking of making it my go-to icing next time I make a chocolate cake. Our vegan chocolate and coconut cake would also be great for people dealing with allergies as it contains no dairy, no eggs and no lactose. Obviously there’s wheat flour and coconut, which I know can cause people issues, but if you’re okay with coconut, maybe substitute the flour for almond flour, Buckwheat Flour or rice flour instead. Here’s how I did it:
- For the Cake
- 300g self raising flour
- 200g white sugar
- 3/4tsp salt
- 160g dessicated coconut
- 360ml Full Fat Coconut Milk
- 120ml Coconut Oil (Melted)
- 1 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- For the Icing
- 420g Icing Sugar
- 120g Raw Cacao Powder
- 110g Coconut Oil (melted)
- 60ml Coconut Milk
- 2 tbsps Dessicated Coconut (for decorating)
- Preheat the oven to 180°C
- Rub two 8 inch cake pans with a little coconut oil and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and then add the sugar, salt and dessicated coconut. Mix together well.
- Then add in the coconut milk, melted coconut oil, vinegar, and vanilla and stir into a thick batter. Make sure it’s well mixed, you do tend to find pockets of dry ingredients if you don’t.
- Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans and spread it out to the edges of the pans with a spatula or the back of a spoon, the batter will be too thick to spread out on its own.
- Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean.
- Transfer the cakes to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before icing.
- Prepare your icing by adding the icing sugar, cacao powder, coconut oil and coconut milk to a mixing bowl and mixing with an electric mixer starting off slow and then gradually increasing speed until thick and smooth.
- If your icing is too thick, add a tiny bit more coconut milk, a drop at a time until you reach the right consistency, if it’s too thin add more icing sugar.
- Ice your cake and decorate it with plenty of dessicated coconut.
We’re trying really hard at the moment to reduce the amount of animal products we eat and knowing that we can still have a properly indulgent treat without using any animal-derived ingredients at all is so encouraging. I think that added drop of virtue made this cake taste even better! Let me know if you give this a go and if you make any tweaks to the recipe, I love to see variations and changes that other people try. Next time, I’m going to try to find some vegan pouring cream to go with it!
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Wow its great thanks for sharing this
OMG this chocolate cake recipe is so gooood! Im making this my official chocolate cake recipe!
Thanks for sharing
this is really nice, I read two articles at one time, 1st was on Mansi Rana;’s Blog and 2nd is you. both are amazing.