The Perfect No-Egg, No-Dairy Chocolate Cake

We felt like a chocolate cake, so we browsed the internet for a recipe but after I have found a couple of recipes, I realised that we had no eggs in...ooops....So, being snowed in and about a foot and a half of snow everywhere outside, there was simply no chance of me going outside to buy eggs. So we found this recipe which we tweaked and tried, and the result was a delicious moist chocolate cake. We did not cover it with frosting, we ate it plain, But we will include the recipe for the frosting as well. The batter can be also used to do some delicious super-chocolatey cupcakes. Hope you love this cake as much as we did!! You will need...

• 180g Self Raising Flour
• 3 heaped tablespoons good quality unsweetened cocoa powder, we used Bournville
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 175g brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 5 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 cup (240ml) cold water
• 10 ml brandy

For the frosting

• 300g Cream cheese
• 55g + 30g softened butter
• 325g Icing sugar
• Rum, few drops (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4 / 180°C.
2. Place flour, cocoa, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. Mix well.
3. Make two deep holes in the dry mixture. Into one, pour the oil and into the other one, pour the vinegar. 
4. Pour the water and brandy into the bowl. Mix (on low speed or by hand) the wet and dry ingredients together until there aren't any more lumps.
5. Pour into a 23cm cake tin. (You do not need to grease the tin)
6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until you insert a toothpick and comes out clean.If you are going to frost it, let it cool down first.

Enjoy!!

R & A