I love using olive oil in baking. It results in a wonderful texture and makes sure the cake stays incredibly moist. The savoury flavour comes through, and goes particularly well with chocolate. This cake is rich, decadent and intensely chocolate; the perfect pick-me-up.
Notes:
*The cake recipe itself is vegan, for a vegan variation of the frosting, use my 3-ingredient Vegan Whipped Ganache.
*The olive oil can be substituted with any neutral oil of choice.
*The recipe works with any milk of choice. I have tried this recipe with regular, almond and soy milk.
Ingredients:
For the cake:
- 135 g all purpose flour
- 50 g cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- a pinch of salt
- 225 ml milk of your choice (soy, almond, regular all work)
- 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
- 150 g caster sugar
- 150 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
For the frosting:
- 150 g mascarpone cheese, at room temperature
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 3 tablespoons icing sugar
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line an 8×11″ loaf pan with parchment paper.
- Put the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl and sift twice.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, vinegar, sugar, oil and vanilla extract. Pour into the flour mixture and whisk until well combined.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 40-55 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and let cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then remove from tin and leave to cool completely.
- To make the frosting, add the mascarpone cheese into a bowl and whisk until smooth. Sift in the icing sugar and cocoa powder and whisk to combine.
- Spread frosting on top of cake, when cake has cooled completely.
