You might also like these recipes for vegan Oreo cake, vegan chocolate orange bundt cake and vegan chocolate cupcakes. This vegan chocolate cake recipe is so good that you might not want to share! Which is a shame because it makes a great birthday cake or just a great cake to enjoy at any time, because who doesn’t love chocolate?
Why you’ll love this recipe
The cake has a soft and fluffy crumb that literally melts in your mouth. It is also insanely chocolatey. There’s cocoa powder in the cake and both cocoa powder and melted chocolate in the frosting. The frosting is not cloyingly sweet with just two cups of confectioners’ sugar. You can use more but I love to taste the chocolate rather than the sugar, and two cups does the frosting perfect justice. If you don’t want to use sugar and want to sweeten your frosting naturally, with maple syrup, I have a hack for you in the tips. Finally, this is a super easy cake to make. The batter comes together in one bowl, making cleanup a breeze.
How to make vegan chocolate cake
Dry ingredients: Start out by sifting your dry ingredients into a bowl–the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. This does two things. It adds more air into your flour, which makes the cake lighter, but it also helps remove any lumps in the flour and other ingredients so everything integrates nicely. Next whisk all the ingredients. Wet ingredients: Now just dump in the wet ingredients: sugar, yogurt, water, vegetable oil, pure vanilla extract and apple cider vinegar. You can also add an optional teaspoon of instant coffee granules at this point if you like. I love coffee in chocolate–this small amount brings out the chocolate flavor without really making it taste like coffee. But you can leave it out if you don’t want to use it. Check to get new recipe updates by email.
Whisk everything quickly until integrated but as always, when working with wheat flour cakes, don’t overmix because you don’t want to develop the gluten. Bake and cool: Divide the batter betweeen two parchment-lined, oiled and floured 8- or 9-inch cake tins and bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 30 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the cake to loosen it. Then place a dish on the top of the cake pan and invert it quickly. Carefully flip the cake once more and let it continue cooling on a rack, right side up. Repeat for the second cake. Frosting: Always wait until a cake is completely cool to frost it or the butter in your frosting will melt and run all over the place. As cake tops usually bake up slightly domed, you can prepare the cake for frosting by making the top flat– to do this just use a long, serrated knife, positioned flat, to cut off the domed part, and reward yourself, the baker, by eating it. You can just skip this step as it’s purely cosmetic. To make the frosting, beat half a cup of cocoa powder with two sticks of 16 tablespoon of softened, room temperature (not melted) vegan butter. Add a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract and two cups of powdered sugar, half a cup at a time, and beat in until smooth and creamy. You can use more or less powdered sugar based on how sweet you want the frosting to be. This frosting is perfect by itself, and you can use it at this point. But to make it extra chocolatey I melt a cup of semisweet chocolate chips in a double boiler and whisk it into the frosting at the end. You can use maple syrup for the frosting instead of powdered sugar. If the frosting becomes grainy, place it in the refrigerator for about half an hour. Beat it again with a hand mixer and it should become creamy again.
More vegan cake recipes
Recipe card
