Chocolate Cake

Confession: I love chocolate. Dark chocolate is actually my favorite, but I like most chocolate in general unless it's cheap and crappy. So you can imagine how sad it makes me that the majority of the chocolate that I really love contains milk, which is a vegan no-no.

Let me be straight up with you here: I can live without dairy if I have to, despite being raised on milk and cheese in true Midwestern fashion, but what I'm not sure I can live without is my chocolate. Especially around a certain time each month (you know what I'm talking about, we don't need to be crass here).

Before you give me guff, I already know that there are vegan chocolate options, and I plan to indulge in those. I just don't have any of them right now. And since Tony and I make a point of grocery shopping only at specific times to avoid spending too much money, it'll be a little while before our next shopping trip rolls around. Plus, we have tons of food right now, and I simply can't see going to a grocery store just to find chocolate without milk because there's no way that that will be the only thing I buy. I know myself way too well for that!

So, in the mean time, the chocolate is all on me to figure out. I will be honest, I wasn't really even thinking about chocolate when I ran across this recipe for vegan chocolate cake. What I was thinking was that I needed to find something delicious that I could impress some friends with because we had friends coming over for dinner (and, really, what's dinner without dessert?).  And since I was going to be serving them vegan food, I wanted it to really shine. You know how it is, you make the best dishes when you have people over so that you can really show them how well you can put a meal together. It ain't no time for boxed mac and cheese when company's coming, let alone boxed cake!

The recipe seemed really simple, which was what sold me on this cake. I wanted something that I could put together while the baby was napping. Minimal fuss, but maximum flavor. The liquid component in this cake comes from warm coffee, vanilla, and vegetable oil instead of containing eggs. I had a bit of a concern that it would taste too much like coffee, but the flavor of the coffee was really very minimal here. It was a nice undertone, but if you didn't know that there was coffee in the cake, you probably would never have guessed. Tony actually didn't know that coffee was one of the ingredients until I started to write this and asked him about the flavor of the coffee in the cake. His response was, "What coffee?"

It was a really nice, moist cake. It released very easily from the bundt pan. It assembled easily, baked easily, presented easily. This is a really good recipe, guys! It's perfect for a time when you want to put out minimal effort but still have something really good. I'd say it's exactly the kind of vegan desert that a busy mom can work with. And everyone who ate it tonight enjoyed it. We still have half the cake left, and I am really looking forward to having another piece tomorrow.

A little powdered sugar on top, and you've got a winner!

This cake could definitely get me through those chocolate cravings. Until I can find a vegan chocolate that I know I enjoy and can reliably find, this cake will make things a lot easier for me. It'll probably make things a lot easier for Tony too. Just sayin'.