Really easy to make chocolate cake, it’s all done in a food processor. It’s deep dark and super chocolatey for a real dairy-free egg-free chocolate fix. I promise you can’t taste the beetroot, but it’s the beetroot that makes it fudgey. I made this cake for a friend who hasn’t eaten cake for years because she can’t eat eggs and she really loved it and ate nearly all of it! In the picture I’ve made two cakes (double everything) and sandwiched them together with the icing, then iced it all and decorated it with freeze frozen raspberries. It’s very rich and chocolatey so it’s lovely served with more berries and of course, vanilla ice cream. By the way…if I’m feeling lazy I use the Betty Crocker chocolate fudge frosting from a supermarket (which is vegan) instead of making the frosting. And sometimes I cut it half and sandwich a bit of good quality cherry jam in the middle, which keeps it super moist.

Recipe

Serves 8.

Ingredients:
Cake
100 ml light olive oil
175 g of pre-cooked beetroot in natural juices, drained
50 g unsweetened cocoa powder
200 g self-raising flour
175 g soft brown sugar
200 g soya yogurt or full fat almond milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Chocolate icing
150 g dark chocolate
3 tablespoons of maple syrup or runny honey
3 tablespoons very strong black coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Freeze-dried raspberry pieces for decoration (optional)

How:
Cake
Preheat the oven to 180ºc or 350ºF.
Coat the inside of a 20 cm spring-form cake tin with cake release spray.
Put the beetroot into a food processor and blend till smooth.
Put in the rest of the cake ingredients and whizz until thoroughly mixed.
Pour into the cake tin and bake for 30-40:minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Don’t over cook as it won’t be fudgey and will be grainy. Leave to cool in tin.

Icing
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of gently bubbling water. Once melted, remove bowl from pan.
Add the coffee and vanilla and whisk.
At this point it might become grainy but once you mix in the maple syrup or honey it becomes glossy and smooth again.
Leave to cool for 20 mins, then smooth over cake.
Sprinkle with the dried raspberry flakes or any other decoration of your choice (little gold balls from the cake decorating section of the supermarket also look nice).

Lastly… this cake really won’t be fudgey if you overcook it. A friend of mine did and it became grainy and not very nice. So my advice is use an oven thermometer if you are not sure of the accuracy of your oven (I always do) and test with a skewer at 50 minutes. I bake two sometimes and stack them on top of each, glued together with a thin layer of frosting before frosting the cake all over with a blunt knife.