Vegetarian Chocolate Cake

It's hard making cake for  my extended family as quite a few of them are vegetarian, some don't like creamy, some don't like the 'eggy' smell yada yada yada..

I'm still seraching for a good white vegetarian cake recipe but I think I found my vegetarian chocolate cake. It's really really good. Double thumbs up from all. The key to the cake I think is in the type of cocoa powder. Because there's so much cocoa powder in the recipe, it dominates the flavour of the cake which makes up for the lack of eggs. I use Valrhona. 

For Ryan's birthday, he wanted Chocolate Cake. So the construction of this cake came in four parts - the cake, the whipped chocolate cream, the chocolate ganache and chocolate glacage.

Ah prepping my kitchen space - where the magic happens! I love baking past midnight - the air is cooler and  everyone, well mostly everyone is asleep.

The cake begins with creaming the butter the sugar till pale and fluffy. Then in a separate bowl, the cocoa powder is mixed with water to create a paste. That is added to the butter mixture and then the reamining ingredients are added. 

The first time I made the cake, it was really crumbly and difficult to cut. So this time around to make my job easier, I baked into two 8" pans.

Whilst the cakes were baking, the next easy peasy step was the ganache. Just hot cream onto chocoalte chips and mix until combined with no lumps. For a more luxurious taste and glossy look, a knob of butter can be mixed into the room temperature ganache. Then its off to the refrigerator to harden and set.

I recently purchased ring moulds to make it easier for me to fill cakes. So naturally I bought 8" moulds for 8" pans - but no... 

Darn cake that came out from the 8" pans were smaller !!! Arghhhh - so out came my plastic wrap. Sigh - I need to go get 7" ring mould now. Sob Sob

I mixed in a little bit of nutella into the ganache as well to give it a hazelnut taste. So four layers of cake filled with ganache. Then covered the whole thing with chocolate whipped cream (ganache added to whipped cream), piped a border of ganache on the top and bottom and poured the chocolate glacage in the middle. 
Some decor after - et viola ! Happy Birthday Ryan !

                      

Chocolate Vegetarian Cake :- adapted from a recipe from Taste Goblet

125 g softened unsalted butter 
1 cup fine castor sugar  
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1/2 cup cocoa (Valrhona preferred)

1/2 cup hot water
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature

1 3/4 cups cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 

1 teaspoon of vinegar

Prepare two 8" baking pans by greasing it and lining the bottom with greaseproof paper. Preheat oven to 180'C.

Mix the cocoa in the hot water and let it cool. 

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually the room temperature cocoa mixture to the butter/sugar mixture.

Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and add it to the creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Mix thoroughly. 

Add in the vinegar and vanilla essence and mix well.

Spoon the cake mixture into prepared pans and bake in a moderate oven (180 deg. C) for 40-50 minutes or until the top springs back when lightly pressed.

Let the cake to cool in its pan for 10 minutes. Then turn it out and allow to cool before icing.