Vegan Chocolate Heresy

One of my early recipe posts was for Orange Chocolate Heresy cake. With my recent excursions into vegan cooking, I did some experimenting and came up with an suitable (albeit orange-free) revision of it. Not that there's any apparent reason why it couldn't work with orange zest, too. I just didn't have any at hand, and I didn't feel like it was worth holding back on posting the recipe to try making such a version of it.

I know the typical flax seed meal "eggs" are mixed 1:3 with water, but given that I use vegetable bases for my batter instead of traditional flour, I've found much more success with a flipped ratio. My guess is that the water in the plantains makes up for what's missing. Well, whatever the exact reasons may be, this worked, and I didn't even need to let the flax seed meal soak until it started to turn gelatinous. Win-win!

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Ingredients:

• 3 ripe plantains (the blacker, the better), pureed

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/3 cup maple syrup

• 0.5 cup coconut oil, melted

• 6 Tbsp flax seed meal

• 2 Tbsp water

• 0.5 Tbsp baking powder

• 1.5 Tbsp cream of tartar (or 1 Tbsp baking powder)

• 0.5 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

• 2.5 Tbsp coconut flour (use 3 Tbsp for more of a traditional dry cake texture or reduce to 2 Tbsp for more of a fudge/brownie texture)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg.

2. Combine plantains, flax seed meal, water, vanilla extract, maple syrup, and coconut oil in a large bowl. Mix well.

3. Add baking soda, cream of tartar (or baking powder), and cocoa powder. Mix well.

4. Add coconut flour. Mix well, and let it sit for 1-2 minutes.

5. Pour the mixture into a lightly oiled 8"x8" cake pan.

6. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick poked near the center comes out clean.

7. Let it cool before cutting.

8. (optional) Top with fruit soup!