Absurdly Easy Chocolate Cake

[Pink Bullets]

I made this recipe tonight, but I used 8 tbps (1/2 cup) cocoa rather than 6 and made them into cupcakes (20-25 minutes in over rather and 30) and they were great! My omni-family loved them. :)

[Jessikah]

I just made this recipes - it made 12 cupcakes and a cake! and OMG - I could have eaten all of the batter! It was sooo gooey and so chocolately! 10/10 Michael!

[*Sunflower*]

This cake is so YUMMMMY!!!! I made it more than a month ago and never posted how great it is, but now I am. I also added more cocoa, yum!! I made a chocolate cake from another recipe that day but it came out like crap so I turned to this one and it was 1,000,000,000,000,000 times better!!

[SavedbytheBlood]

Ok, i'm gonna make this cake. Haha. Wow. I have to get some coca. I think that's the only thing I don't have. Yayyyyyy. :D

[Tofu-N-Sprouts]

Just so you know - coca and cocoa are two different things and you'll have an Absurdly Awful Chocolate Cake if you plan on using it...

But eh, knock yourself out...

[irinam]

my oven's not working :*(

that means...no chocolate cake for me!! maybe thats not such a bad thing after all? lol

[Diana]

I don't have time to read through all the pages, so perhaps this question has been asked.

What kind of vinegar???? There are so many types.

[froggythefrog]

I've had success using apple cider vinegar and white would work just as well. Just pretend you're living in the 1930's US, can't afford milk or eggs and want to make a cake.

[taurushead]

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum

[Diana]

Please, I have one more question. What kind of oil is best for this cake? I want to make it today for my son's 15th birthday celebration and I want it to be as yummy as possible. One does not celebrate 15 years old twice and I want this to be a cake he remembers!!!!

[*Sunflower*]

I use canola and it turns out great every time!

[misq17]

I also use canola oil and it's really yummy. Happy birthday to your son :)

[Diana]

Am confused by the English terms. Is Canola the same as Rapeseed? (I think this is what we call "colza" in French.)

Unfortunately, I'm out of Colza. I'll have to use Grapeseed instead. I use Grapeseed for most of my cooking at high temperatures. It does not have a strong taste but is very healthy. It is high in antioxidants and it reduces cholesterol as well.

[misq17]

Yes, canola is rapeseed oil. I'm sure any mild flavored oil would work.

[Fyvel]

I just finished baking this cake. As others suggested, I added an extra 2 tbsp of cocoa. I haven't tasted it yet (it's still cooling) but it smells delicious!

I'll be taking this as "my" dessert at my family's lobster boil pot luck tomorrow (I refuse to be present while they cook the poor things alive). I'm hoping to feed it to the omnis and then tell them there was no milk or eggs in it :lol:

[Bonoluvr]

I made this cake tonight, and omg it is soooooooooooo good!!!!! I used canola oil........and the only vinegar i had in the house was balsamic......LOL......so thats what i used but you would never know it!!!!
yum yum yum

[Diana]

The cake is in the oven. However, I believe there must be a mistake with the conversion from cups to grams for the flour. 680 grams of flour for a cake would be enough to feed an army. I put in 300 which already seemed a lot. Also, 450 grams of sugar in a cake sounds like it would be the sweetest cake in the whole world. I put in 200 grams only. Either there is a problem with the conversion, or else North Americans eat a lot of sugar.

[Diana]

Okay, so the cake came out of the oven. It is a bit soggy. But then again, it is probably undercooked because I think I heated the oven too much (I have a funny oven) so it started burning and I had to remove it before the 30 minutes were up.

It tastes good even if it is a bit soggy.

I still think though that the flour conversion into grams is wrong. And the sugar content I put in was fine. If I had put 450 grams it would have been sickeningly sweet.

According to this website http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/gram_calc.htm , 3 cups of flour is 125 grams times by three which would equal 375 grams, and not 680. (Like I said, 680 grams of flour is enough to feed a small army!) I only put in 300 grams but next time I'll put a bit more.

I double-checked on another converter website as well.

[Bonoluvr]

I followed the recipe using cups, i used about 1 3/4 c of sugar instead of 2 cups only because thats what i had left!
anyway my cake came out perfect! and yes maybe some americans eat a lot of sugar but i think a cake is supposed to be sweet!

[Fyvel]

I cooked this cake for about 40 minutes instead of the recommended 30, and even still one of the layers came out as slightly undercooked. We just tried the cake and it is delicious. Even my skeptical mother admitted it was very good :D

[Diana]

Actually, now that the cake has cooled down (I tasted it when it was still warm), it's not soggy anymore. It's great. I will add a wee bit more flour but not more sugar. I prefer my chocolate cakes to taste of chocolate and not of sugar.

But I must PM Michael to tell him that there's something wrong with his converter.

[Fyvel]

The chocolate cake was a hit with the omni family :D

One of my crazy uncles, who used to make fun of me relentlessly for being a vegetarian (and who has now admitted to starting to move towards vegetarianism by giving up red meat - still not sure if he is pulling my leg or not), kept going back for more cake, exclaiming "It's VEGAN! I can eat as much of it as I like" :lol: I didn't have the heart to tell him it didn't work that way :D

[Diana]

Fyvel: that is very funny. :D Your uncle sounds like quite a character!

[hannahbanana]

Man I have such a love/hate relationship with this cake - it's sooooo good, but I always eat wayyy too much of it!

Anyway, made it tonight with a little twist - I usually like it without any frosting or anything, but this time to sweeten it up a bit I added vegan chocolate chips. I was worried that since the batter is so runny the chips would just sink to the bottom. My mom said that rolling the chips in flour would keep them from doing that, but I thought that might taste funny - so I rolled them in cocoa powder and it worked great! All the chips just kind of floated on top of the batter and melted into gooey goodness when it cooked. Yum!! :lick:

[Tesseract]

I make a version of this recipe from Moosewood Cooks at Home called Six-Minute Chocolate Cake, and it's almost identical (only it's about half the size).

They have a variation where you substitute coffee for half the water for a mocha cake. :lick:

They also have a simple but decadent chocolate glaze that's great on it (you make it while the baked cake is cooling):

1/2 pound bittersweet chocolate
3/4 cup hot water, milk, or half-and-half
1/2 tsp vanilla

After baking the cake, reset the oven to 300 degrees F and let it cool down. Then melt the chocolate in a small ovenproof bowl or a heavy skillet in the oven for about 15 minutes. Stir the hot liquid and the vanilla into the chocolate until smooth. Spoon over the cooled cake. Chill the glazed cake for at least 30 minutes. (I'm sure that if you were in the mood, you could put the coffee in the glaze and have chocolate cake with mocha glaze-- mmm, my childhood favorite!)

We made it with homemade vegan half-and-half -- half Silk Creamer and half Silk Unsweetened-- and it was great!