I'm in Love with the Cocoa

One of my favorite things about being a vegan is the pure, unadulterated joy that comes from discovering things that are accidentally vegan. Oreos, Bac'n Bits, and today's Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting are all excellent example - and believe it or not, the latter is much tastier and less chemically than the first two combined!

My mom found the recipe for this dairy-free, egg-free chocolate cake years ago in the Moosewood Cookbook, before anyone in the house was even vegetarian, and it's remained a family favorite. The cake is super light and fluffy, thanks to the chemical reaction between baking soda and apple cider vinegar, and has an incredibly rich, deep flavor that adults and kids will both love. And the recipe is incredibly simple - I can almost guarantee you already have all the ingredients in your pantry.

The frosting is a new addition that comes from Oh She Glows, and only has two ingredients. Two! It's a little time-consuming since you have to chill the coconut cream and the melted frosted before you can actually spread on your cake, but it also keeps well in the fridge so go ahead and make a batch ahead of time, then spread all over anything and everything.

Take a gander at the photos below, and click through for the recipes above - you won't be disappointed!

No bowl necessary. 

Baking soda vinegar swirls.  

Coconut cream and chocolate chips. Heaven.  

This was at 6:30am. I did not plan ahead.  

Worth it. 

The Frosting on the Cake

My ladyfriend HATES carrots. Hates 'em. When I asked how she felt about taste-tasting some carrot cake this weekend, she begrudgingly agreed, on the condition that the carrots were smothered in a thick layer of frosting. Challenge accepted, courtesy of this week's Vegan Carrot Cake and Macadamia Frosting!

I have to admit, I was skeptical than a vegan substitute was going to live up to the delicious cream cheese frosting you normally find on carrot cake, and had resigned myself to the horrible fate of eating an entire cake all by myself if K didn't like it.

Luckily, we were both happily surprised by how this little experiment turned out. The cake was perfect - dense, moist, and not too sweet - and the frosting was impressively creamy. The macadamia nuts and cashews give it a subtle nutty taste, and the frosting is so rich that it's hard to believe that there's no butter or cream cheese hiding in there. I plan on using this liberally on other sweet treats in the future as well - red velvet cupcakes are next on my list.

Jeanine over at Love & Lemons knocks it out of the park with this one, so I'm going to send you her way for the recipe! Plus she has two adorable Shiba Inu pups so her Instagram account is basically dogs and delicious food...I don't know what more you could really ask for.

My only note - when the recipe calls for a "high-speed blender" for the frosting, apparently this is some NASA-level shit because the speedy little Ninja I normally use took forever and a day to get the texture super creamy. Don't fret! It'll take a little longer but you will get there eventually. Enjoy the photos, then try this recipe out for yourself!