I’ve had a lot of great inspiration from vegan cookbooks. I’m a vegetarian not a vegan but when I don’t drink cows milk or consume dairy products my skin is a lot better without it, so the recipes in vegan cookbooks are great for me.
Especially recipes for cookies and cakes which usually contain quite a bit of bad stuff for the skin – processed sugar, cows milk, butter, gluten etc. You’ll find that a lot of vegan cookbooks not only provide dairy-free recipes, but they also are a little healthier so they provide alternatives to processed sugars and gluten as well.
And you don’t even have to be a vegetarian to enjoy vegan cooking. If you’re a meat eater then you’ll definitely benefit from cooking a vegan or vegetarian meal every now and again because it will most likely add a few more vegetables into your diet.
Here’s a video I recorded about cooking vegan foods –
Very Yummy Vegan Chocolate Cake
I can say confidently that hands down this is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever baked. It beats all the “normal” chocolate cake recipes I’ve made (you know, with milk, butter, cane sugar, etc). I even fed it to my chocoholic meat eating friend and he loved it too and went back for seconds!
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups of spelt flour (I use wholemeal but this is up to you)
- 2 cups of xylitol
- 3/4 cup of cacao powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking-soda
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 6 Tblsp safflower oil
- 2 1/4 cups of filtered water
- 2 Tblsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (the real stuff!)
Loving preparation
Preheat oven to 350°. Combine all ingredients and mix well. Pour into a 9″ x 13″ square baking pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.
I prefer this cake without icing, but you can top with nuts, berries and coconut. Or you can melt a little organic vegan dark chocolate over the top.
Recipe source:
This recipe has been modified from the “Big Momma Freedom Chocolate Cake” in Vegan Fusion World Cuisine by Mark Reinfeld and Bo Rinaldi. I highly recommend this book!
25 responses ↓
This recipe sounds delish! But I’m wondering if I can somehow substitute some of the Xylitol for Stevia and Agave…? Xylitol plays havoc with my digestive system, I get bloating, cramping, gas and it’s not fun – it’s really really painful… I generally avoid it like the plague… I’m ok with Agave as I don’t have candida…
Oh definitely. The original recipe used sucunat which is a healthier for of cane sugar. You can use whichever sweetener you like!
I know this might sound kind of weird, but would you mind posting what you generally eat throughout the week? You and I have similar diets, and I’d love to get new ideas of what to eat! (Plus I always get myself in a rut because I eat the same things over and over!)
Thanks for keeping up your site and posting awesome recipes like this!
I have a question about safflower oil. I am not sure if I can find this oil in my country and don’t really know what kind of an oil is it, so can I use some other type of oil and which one? How about coconut?
Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
Thanks Fran, you are the best! That recipe looks amazing!! I have never tried baking with Xylitol. Sooo exciting and pretty much guilt free. It is a dark and cool Spring day here in Ontario, Canada and a piece of (non-candida forming) cake would make my day. I might also substitute one of the cups of flour with a nut flour like almond or pecan. More protein! Off to buy some Xylitol now. Also, thanks for the tip on the Vegan cookbook. Currently I am addicted to the Vegan cookbook Get it Ripe, by Jae Steele. It is amazing and she has some of the best smoothie combinations I have tried.
Hi Fran! I think this statement you made is misleading:
“Or if you want to make it un-vegan, melt a little organic dark chocolate over the top.”
Um, I’m vegan, and there are LOTS of organic, fair-trade vegan chocolate bars out there! Any health food store should have loads of different brands of vegan dark chocolate. So I think you might want to reconsider that sentence, b/c it makes it seem like vegans can’t have organic dark chocolate!
Thanks
I just hope you’re eating organic, free-range eggs! I won’t go on a rant about the cruelty of battery cage eggs, but I’m sure you already know.
Thanks again for the recipe.
This sounds good, I’ll have to try this.
I don’t use a lot of xylitol though because I’m still not positive about it, I might try sucunat instead, that’s a healthy sugar (thought it still is sugar).
Yeah, there’s definitely vegan chocolate out their. The kind I have is dark and only has cacao, cacao butter, and sugar. I love it’s simplicity! Too bad there isn’t any agave chocolate around here. Though I’m not sure about agave either since it’s higher in fructose than high fructose corn syrup. Ug! So much controversy!
Hi Fran,
Could you post your friend blogger’s Chinese herb website if you don’t mind? I really want to learn more about them. By the way, the cake sounds great!!!
Fran, totally unrelated, but here is a link to an article on todays’ Melbourne newspaper “The Age” that I thought you and other readers would find interesting: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/beat-acne-with-diet-20090420-ac5x.html
Finally the acne/diet relationship is getting thru to the mainstream…
The cake sounds so yummy!
I have a question Fran. Is Cacao the same thing as Organic Cocoa? Thanks!
Christina- My diet is currently going through a transformation as I add more and more BED principles into it. I’m about 80% BED now so once I ease into it more I’ll be blogging more about it
Butterfly- Yes other types of oils are fine. Coconut oil will give it a coconut flavor so you need to be okay with that! Have you looked in the health stores for safflower oil? I can’t find it in the normal grocery stores here, only the health stores.
Meredith- I miss Canada
Jill- Oh you’re right! There are heaps of vegan chocolates out there (um, including the one I sell!!!). And yes, organic free range eggs only. And I have a friend who’s family owns a cotton farm and I’m lucky enough to get some farm eggs from them.
Kyel- The loving earth chocolate I sell is sweetened with agave.
vivienne- Here’s the link! http://deepesthealth.com/
Kyle- Essentially cacao and cocoa are exactly the same thing. I go for brands that call it “cacao” because usually they’re the ones that are fair trade and make the powder while still retaining its full nutrients.
So cocoa is less nutrient dense? Good to know, thanks!
Wow! How did you get 6000+ readers on your blog? Do the YouTube videos really help drive traffic?? I am too shy to do vidoes, but maybe I should try to overcome this problem. I don’t have an acne problem, but I am a major health nut!
Hi Fran – just watched your interview with Yaro. Great cross-selling promotion…:-) I have no acne, but I live on (some) live food – but this has nothing to do with my question – which are business related:
1) Would you share with me what you use for shopping cart integration – is it a plugin, or have you asked someone to integrate this for you ( I see you use PayPal for payment process).
2) What video editing-tool do you use for integrting your URL?
Cheers – and thanks,
Stephan
sbecker@beautifuloceans.com
Twitter: @StephBeautifulO
Sarah, my friends all think of me as a health, skin, beauty & makeup guru and tell me that I should have my own website too! lol
but I am not confident enough to do it either…
Anyways, Fran pretty much has it covered here…
Hi Fran,
I while back you sent out an e-mail that talked about things you can eat when you on the run! One of the items you mentioned were these baby coconuts. Where in TO did you find them? They look so cute and I would love to try them.
Thanks!
Just found your blog (through Yaro’s) and thought I would comment. The cake sounds good. I’m not vegetarian or vegan but I have been trying to eat much healthier adding more veggies and less processed foods to my diet.
Hubby and I enjoy quinoa occasionally. I definitely have to have a recipe to make a meal but hubby cooks without and everything he makes is always so good. He prefers that I don’t use a recipe because it usually costs a lot more to get all the ‘odd’ ingredients that we don’t currently have.
I look forward to watching more of your videos and hopefully doing some of my own. Just a bit nervous about doing them but hopefully I’ll get over that. Great blog!
Sarah & Angie- YouTube videos are really easy. I forget that people actually watch them so it’s like I’m just talking to myself!
Meredith- I bought those baby coconuts in Toronto in Wholefoods. I did see them somewhere else while I was traveling but unfortunately I can’t remember where that was. I can’t find them in Australia though unfortunately
question.
can you use substitute spelt flour with any other flours?
like almond or quinoa flour?
thank you.
It’s my sister’s birthday in a couple of days and I want to surprise her with a HEALTHY birthday cake. She’s very skeptical about healthy takes on traditionally not-so-healthy recipes. Do you think I could fool her with this recipe? Does anyone else have any other recipes? Also, would love some healthy frosting/icing/decorating ideas?
Thanks!
I can’t make it right! I use sunflower oil and stevia powder instead. Maybe I’m not using it in the right amount. I use two teaspoons of stevia powder and 5 or 6 tblspoon of sunflower oil.
I have just eaten the best ever chocolate cake and it was very good. Just a little too sweet to my taste but that is easily fixed by reducing the amount of xylitol the next time a make it….oh yes, there will definitely be a next time! Thanks so much for the recipe! Try it everyone.
[...] Original recipe originally discovered here – with extreme gratitude for enlightening me to this gorgeous recipe. tweetmeme_url = [...]
Ah, Fran, thank goodness for conscious folks spreading conscious food recipes. This is just the cake recipe I was looking for.
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