Vegan Mofo Day 4: Double Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

My husband's birthday is today, so I had to figure out a special cake for him. His favorite flavor combination is chocolate and peanut butter. We're both in a sugar coma right now, but everything, especially the frosting, tasted delicious.

Double Chocolate Cake
1 - 10" cake

3/4 cup Teff Flour
3/4 cup Tapioca Flour
3/4 cup Sorghum Flour
1 scant cup Cacao Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup Agave
2 large over ripe Bananas
1 scraped Vanilla Bean
1/2 cup Olive Oil
1/4 cup Water
1/2 cup Enjoy Life or other Vegan Chocolate Chips
1 tsp coconut vinegar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use a fine mesh strainer to sift the cacao powder to break up any large chunks. Combine all of the dry ingredients with a whisk. Combine the bananas, agave, olive oil, and water in a high speed blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold everything together with a spatula.

Put a little palm oil on a paper towel and wipe down the interior of a 10" cake pan. Put a little teff flour in the pan and rotate the pan, patting the sides to evenly coat the pan with a very light layer of flour. When your pan is ready and the oven is preheated, add the chocolate chips and vinegar to the batter, stir vigorously, and then pour the batter into the cake pan. Use a spatula to smooth the top of the cake.

Bake the cake for about 30 minutes, or until the middle of the cake is firm. A toothpick shouldn't come away completely clean because you want some moisture.


There is a slight hint of banana to the cake. If you do not like banana, you could easily add a little more cacao to mask the flavor. Banana, chocolate and peanut butter is a great combo, so we didn't mind (and honestly I think the peanut butter masks the flavor even more).


Frosting
Enough for a little more than 1 - 10" cake

1/2 cup palm oil shortening
1/2 cup "creamy" peanut butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar*
2 TB hot water

Put all ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the hot water. Combine with a hand mixer until it is smooth.

*Vegan and Allergy Note: Not all sugar is vegan. Many manufacturers use bone char during processing to make the sugar white and use the bone char as a filter. I run turbinado sugar through a blender to make powdered sugar, although the texture isn't always perfect and doesn't add to the presentation (it's a little lumpy, as you can see in the picture). Wholesome Sweeteners produces sugar without bone char, but they add 3% "corn starch or tapioca starch" to their powdered sugar. If it were just tapioca, I'd consider it, but I'm very allergic to corn. Trader Joe's has powdered sugar with tapioca starch, but it's not on their vegan safe list. Looks like I'm sticking to the blender, but I'll keep checking labels.

I am going to go have a cup of tea and some miso soup to help balance out the sugar swirling through my system. I need to get some sleep so I can go to work tomorrow.