My favorite chocolate cake (which happens to be vegan)

I really dislike it when people turn their nose up immediately at something without knowing the thing.  It is far healthier to have some level of curiosity.  It seems that vegan things get the poking it with a stick treatment.  I don't get it.  There are some things labeled vegan that I think are quite unhealthy but not more unhealthy than a lot of heavily processed things.  If the thing you buy comes from a factory and is FORMED into a shape, that is something to beware no matter what the label states for the chosen diets of many.  But homemade with simple ingredients and called vegan it is hard to go wrong for anyone.

Vegan for those who've missed out is anything that does not contain, use or is adulterated with any animal products.  This can mean something that may not injure the animal but just requires the animal to create it.  So honey is a common one I see being put into things and being called vegan by those who don't know that this is included in the "rule book."

So on with it.  I am a chocolate snob.  I really dislike milk chocolate.  To me it tastes like a trailer park, skittles and milk scalded and formed in brown shapes.  It is a sweet I'm not into.  Dark chocolate on the other hand sends me.  I have never read a romance novel but I imagine it is something like that but with maybe more steamy sex scenes.  Well,  I love chocolate cake but so often they just end up hurting my teeth.  My mother was a fiend for Duncan Hines devil's food cake.  Which she made almost weekly for a good 6 years at one point.  I had never had a cavity and she has had full teeth replacement before 40.  Maybe it was the Duncan Hines maybe not.   For as fat as I was... I could never eat much of that crap.

Later I read more about the difference in chocolates, cocoa and Cacao and found that dark chocolate the higher the cocoa content the better for you it is.  The properties of cacao is very potent and good for you.  But like all good things people try and make it gooder and Sppppffff make it crap instead.  Then the crap version gets famous and everyone knows it as the thing and the original thing becomes ancient and lost.  Chocolate is a power food when used well.  It can give you bursts of energy and alertness.  Which when combined with something that metabolizes slowly like whole wheat or oat flour (both of which are good for diabetic desserts) yields a pretty righteous midday snack or hiking food.   It can reduce hypertension, depression, inflammation (combined with hot peppers this is great for headaches that are related to swelling or other minor inflamed injury) .....................  You CAN have theobromine poisoning but it is largely from refined crap chocolate and usually happens to the ederly who gorge on it.  Do you bring a box of chocolates to your grandma along with everyone else?  Has Granicide been coined?

Anyhow for all the awesome properties dark chocolate has, milk chocolate pretty much drops the ball. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients

• 1 Cup white unbleached flour
• 1/2 Cup whole wheat (I try where I can to squeeze in a little)
• 1 Cup vegan sugar *   (you can use less of course, and any additions you choose I'd adjust this amount as you only really need enough to take the edge off the cocoa's bitterness)
• 1/3 Cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 Cup olive oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch cinnamon
• 1 Cup applesauce ( it should be JUST apples)

I like to add 1/4 Cup 50/50 mix of chopped (chopping them up helps distribute a little throughout the whole recipe) chocolate chips.  My favorite is Dagoba 73% cacao.  They are expensive, but this is why a little goes a long way and I usually make fruit based things.  So splurge and get the best you can afford and keep it DEEP in the pantry until you can't handle it then make it using a small amount and hide it again!

*If you add chocolate chips you can take out at least a 1/4 Cup of sugar and not taste it missing at all.

This recipe is amazing with strawberries and I can only imagine how tasty it would be with walnuts.  

Lightly grease one 9x5 inch loaf pan with olive oil. Sift together the flour, 1/2 the sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add the oil, vanilla, the other remaining sugar, pinch of cinnamon and applesauce. Mix together until smooth.  Scrape into prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes, 22 minutes for cupcakes.  Do I have to say again how impatient I am?  I do cupcakes!

The not vegan bits:
 The strawberry cream is 1/4 cup whipped cream (the real stuff) and a cup of simmered strawberries allowed to cool.  Once the berries are cool then they can be blended with the whipped cream.  Of course the raw stuff is not second place and I completely recommend a pile of them on top!


I have also made these and topped them with warm kumquat marmalade.  Totally ridiculous and amazing but not as awesome as strawberry's mellow awesomeness.