A decadent vegan chocolate cake!
Ingredients
For the cake
- 240g self raising flour
- 1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 35g cocoa
- 75g ground almonds
- 240g granulated sugar
- 150g hard 100% vegetable margarine
- 260ml soya milk
- 150ml soya yogurt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 drops almond extract
For the filling
- 50g soya margarine
- 3 tbsp water
- 200g icing sugar
- 50g cocoa
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
To decorate
- 10g icing sugar
- 200g 70% cocoa plain chocolate, melted
Method
- Preheat oven to 190°C / 170°C Fan Oven / gas mark 5. Grease and base line 2 x springform 20cm cake tins, or 2 x 20cm deep sandwich tins.
- To make the cake: sift flour, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa together into a large bowl.
- Mix the ground almonds and sugar with the flour and cocoa mixture until evenly blended.
- Melt the margarine. Cool slightly. Put soya milk, soya yoghurt and melted margarine in a blender and blend until smooth and well combined.
- Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until incorporated, but do not beat.
- Divide between the two tins, level the tops and bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes until firm to the touch. Do not worry if the top cracks – this is quite normal. Cool in the tins – overnight is fine.
- To make the filling: melt the water and margarine together until the margarine is just melted. Do not let boil or get too hot. Let cool slightly.
- Sift the icing sugar with the cocoa into a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract to the margarine and water then tip into the bowl with the icing sugar and cocoa. Mix well – the mixture will end up quite stiff. If it is runny, the margarine mixture was too hot – just leave it to cool down and set for a while.
- Turn the cakes out of the tins. To make one large cake divide, and carefully spread the filling over the two halves and sandwich together.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar and decorate with drizzles of melted chocolate.
