Dark & Sumptuous Chocolate Cake

I am a little late for meat free monday but therefore today's recipe is a must. If you try this cake you would never guess it's vegan. It is dark, rich, chocolatey - everything you're dreaming of in a chocolate cake. And maybe the best thing? You can lick the bowl with no concerns whatever about catching salmonella from raw eggs or similar things. 

The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's latest book "Simply Nigella", but she posted it to her website as well so all of you can take a look at it and bake it along with me. Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/dark-and-sumptuous-chocolate-cake

Here's the recipe: 

Icing:
60ml (1/4 cup) cold water
75g (5 tablespoons) coconut butter (not the same as oil, made from the flesh of a coconut)
50g (1/4 cup) dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder, unsweetened
150g (6 oz) dark chocolate, broken into pieces

Cake:
225g (1 1/2 cups) plain all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
75g (3/4 cup) cocoa powder, unsweetened
300g (1 1/2 cups) dark brown sugar
375ml (1 1/2 cups) hot water
75g (90ml) coconut oil
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
edible rose petals and chopped pistachios, to decorate

1) First things first: I had no time searching for a shop in Berne where I could buy coconut butter, so I made it myself. I am an avid user of my food processor and it is soon easy. Put 200g shredded coconut in a food processor and process for about 10 minutes until a paste forms. That's your coconut butter. You just do the same as with any other homemade nut butter.

2) Preheat the oven to 180°C (350° F).

3) Place all ingredient for the icing in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring continuously until the coconut butter has melted and everything is smooth. Turn the stove off, but let the saucepan sit on the hot hob. Add the chocolate in pieces, then - still stirring - let the chocolate melt form the heat until all the chocolate has melted and everything's combined. Set aside to cool.

4) Line the bottom of a springform tin (I used a 24cm round tin) with baking paper. Grease the sides with butter. 

5) Add the flour, bicarb, salt, cocoa and instant espresso powder to a bowl and mix with a fork.

6) Mix the hot water, sugar, coconut oil and vinegar and stir until the oil has melted. Then, stir into the dry ingredients and pour the dough into the prepared tin. Bake the cake for 35 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

7) Let the cake cool in the tin. Meanwhile, beat the icing with an electric mixer until it's starting to become a little fluffy. This will help you when spreading it on the cake.

8) Ice the cake with the icing, then decorate with the rose petals and chopped pistachios, if you wish to.

Active preparation time: about 20 minutes
Total preparation time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Yield: 1 24cm round cake (12-16 slices)

Here's how mine looks:

I really love this recipe. It is fast and really easy. It's basically as simple as melt and mix for the dough and the icing is super easily made as well. I found that my icing was too hard as that I could've poured it over the cake, but whisking it with an electric mixer makes it soft enough so it is easy to spread. 
I didn't have any pistachios at home and the only rose petals I could have used were fresh ones from our garden which I didn't want to pick since the purpose of baking was to make my dad happy on a sunday afternoon not winning an award for best decorated cake.

This cake is wonderfully fudgy, moist and incredibly chocolatey. If you don't like chocolate a lot, you're probably not going to love this recipe as much but for every chocolate lover, this is going to be heaven.

Have fun trying and enjoy!