The BEST chocolate cake ever...that happens to be VEGAN. I kid you not!

This was a great cake.  I didn't make it in the pan though, instead I used a medium sized bowl for the dry ingredients and a small bowl for the wet. Poured the wet into the dry and mixed it that way. Greased a 8x8 pan, baked it for about 45 minutes.
For the glaze, I removed the cake from the pan, placed it on a cooling rack with a plate underneath and poured it over, I used earth balance for the glaze.
I found it more to be like a ganache.
It was inexpensive to make and the results were delicious!
kirstenskitchen.ca

how is that vegan?

Most margarines are not vegan - they contain whey or lactose. Also most refined sugar is processed with animal bone char. The charcoal is not 'in' the sugar, but is used in the process as as a filter. Thus by a process-based definition of vegan, refined sugar may not be considered vegan. For those who would prefer not to use refined sugar, there are several alternatives: raw, turbinado, beet sugar, succanat, date sugar, fructose, barley malt, rice syrup, corn syrup, molasses, and maple syrup.

What about sorghum? Could I use it in a baked goods recipe in place of sugar?

the milk part is what made the person say it's not vegan.
milk is an animal bi-product.
however, i'd imagine it can be substituted by soy (or more preferrable to me) almond milk. and then it'd be vegan.

hi.  I made your cake yesterday for my birthday and it turned outso good!  as per someone else's comment earlier, I substituted halfwhole wheat and decorated it with edible nasturtium flowers and slicedalmonds.  I served it up with homemade blueberry icecream (I am notvegan, but you can pretend it's soycream if that makes you feel better:) )
thanks for the recipe. 
It was excellently rich and great! (still is the second day)

Hi there, this cake sounds truly de-lish... but sadly.... :( unable to get my heed around US cups sizes..... how does one go about converting this into UK weights pretty please? And what's the vegat UK equivalent.... Sorry to be so petty

One cup is about 240 mL. One tablespoon is 15 mL. One teaspoon is 5 mL.
You can also do a google search for conversions.

my mom is vegan... she would love this!

I baked a similar cake Wednesday and didn't frost it. In mixing a cake in a baking pan you can end up with lumpy batter. One the novelty wears off try the following:
Grease or oil your baking pan.
In a large blender bowl put in the water, oil, vanilla and vinegar. (Start with the liquids first so the reaction between the soda and vinegar won't work together too soon.) Then layer the dry ingredients on top of the liquids.
Then start up the blender on low and scrape down the sides. Continue blending till the mixture is smooth.
Then pour the batter into the pan and bake.
I learned of this cake back in the 60's and still make it.
js

Trans-fat free Crisco!! Now that is an innovation. Crisco is great for the texture of baked goods--makes them light--BUT I thought by definition, all fats that are solid at room temperature are hydrogenated and hence full of trans-fats. I will investigate this! I will bake you recipe tonight (but with butter--I'm not vegan and would rather have a bit of superb saturated fat than trans-fats, which the body doesn't metabolize well.

dude u were right this is frikken delicious
i amvegan and this is the most successful and simplest vegan cake recipe ive ever come across

This cake was (is, i'm eating it right now lol) AMAZING! thank you soooooo much! :D

Thanks for the recipe. The cake served a bunch of people at a birthday last weekend and it was much appreciated. Cheers.

WTF?
I made it tasted like excrement.

ha ha! try again? you sure it's not your cooking? (c:

Today was my boyfriend´s birthday and I baked him this cake.. he couldn´t believe it was vegan (we are not vegans, but we try to take care of what we eat)... it is not easy here in Peru with so many delicious things!
The only thing is that it resulted a bit flat... is there a way of making it grow a bit more? I olso think of making this same cake but with some fruit... maybe banana... or Lucuma...

are you sure it's not because of the elevation? Peru is pretty high and it's hard to cook things well in high altitudes.

Thanks for this recipe, I made the cake in a loaf pan so it took almost twice as long to bake. It tastes great and I'm about to serve it for the family.

I just thought I'd add my show of appreciation to this 'ible, though I used my own frosting recipe.
Really yummy. Thanks!

I made this cake last week - came out very good. One note about the glaze - mine came out very gritty with undissolved sugar. It was tasty but the texture was sandy.

Anyone attempting this glaze, make sure you let all the sugar dissolve.

Accidentally I added a tablespoon of salt instead of a tee spoon

haha how did it turn out?

i guess salty...

So good!! I used half whole wheat flour, and agave instead of sugar, and... um.. I accidentally put 2 tablespoons of vanilla in the glaze (whoops!) but it was still really tasty! Will definitely make again. Thanks for the recipe!

Thank you so much for this great recipe! My friends and family have all taken copies after tasting my version. My only problem is with the icing which never comes out as dry as illustrated - it does, however, make a fabulous gooey sauce that works well if you serve the cake as a dessert. We especially enjoyed it accompanied with strawberries and a dollop of mascarpone. Yum!

is there a way i could make this for a friend who is allergic to wheat, meaning to say do you know any wheat substitutes that will work for this cake?

The Glaze is not vegan! MILK Duh!

Wonderful cake... thanks for the great recipe!!! I've never made anything vegan, and for my sisters birthday (who's vegan) I wanted to make something special! It really was super moist and very easy to make! Although I tried to make it a layer cake (I wouldn't suggest it) it was so moist that I had a very hard time getting it out of the pan with out it falling apart! The first one I made wasn't very sweet and fell apart so I made another one using sweetened cocoa powder instead and it was really good and very sweet! I added raspberry preserves in the middle of the layers and then toped fresh raspberries on the chocolate glaze. I didn't tell anyone at the party it was vegan until they had eaten it and everyone was so surprised to hear it was because it was sooo good! My sister was so happy to have such a great cake that was so moist! Thanks again, and I will happily make it again for my non-vegan friends and family because it was so great!!!

Is it necessary to grease the baking dish... I'm serving a party of 16-20 and was hoping to double the recipe and icing and stack the cakes, ever tried that and do you think it would work just as well?

P.S. Don't add the salt. And sift the flour either with a fork or a sifter. Also I made my own icing with soy margarine (vegan) from Whole foods.

Thank you for this lovely recipe! This is definitely the best chocolate cake ever!!! When I make chocolate cake I will make this and I'm not even vegan! I have a best friend who is vegan and wanted her to enjoy the cake at our parties so I made this cake! She loved it and so did the non-vegans. Just don't tell people it's vegan! I had this one friend who wouldn't eat it because it was vegan. ( I'm making one now and will bring him a piece and not tell him it's vegan!) Definitely a must make cake!

Was so excited to try this cake, but ended up very disappointed. Yes indeed it is very moist, which is great but taste wise... no not so good. The glaze is pretty good and make the overall fairly OK, but I wanted to just keep the cake as such with just a bit of powdered sugar on top... but realize the cake wasn't very sweet or tasty... so I finally covered it with the glaze... Maybe the French part in me, but this recipe need some serious improvement...

This cake looks so yummy!!!!!!!!

why dont you find a milk and butter alternative before you call it a vegan cake

im so excited my birthday is this monday (turning 17) and im a vegetarin inspiring to be a full vegan and i think this will be a great start im making this for my class to have an in school party and im not going to tell them that its vegan till they all have some i already have this recipe for peanutbuter vegan frosting though so i think im going to skip ur glaze but if the cakes good then ill try it again thanks a lot

Okay, I've made this cake three times now and people go on and ON about it! The fact that it's vegan doesn't even come up in the conversation until they are finished with it! This is truly the best, most moist chocolate cake I have ever tried. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I never get tired of this recipe! Every one loves it and no one even suspects it's Vegan.

This cake is really as good as you promised! Thanks for sharing the recipe (and nice Instructable)!

Hi, planning to make this next week for a friend's birthday. Is it all purpose flour or self-raising flour? Thanks in advance.