Mandarin Chocolate Cake
Bake an easy vegan mandarin chocolate cake with vegan chocolate ganache. The cake is not only vegan but it’s also gluten free and naturally sweetened with dates, no sugar added.
Where summer is reserved for berry tarts and raw cakes, autumn calls for dense and decadent chocolate cakes that are packed with flavor and spice. Mandarin chocolate cake is all that. It’s dark, bitter, spicy and strong and definitely in season throughout the autumn and winter.
It’s no secret that I have a thing for chocolate. Chocolate was one of the things that held me back from going sugar free earlier, the world without chocolate seemed like a really dark and depressing place I wasn’t sure I would survive.
But it turned out that chocolate exists without sugar, it’s called 100 % chocolate. As simple as that. It’s not sweet, it’s bitter. But it’s still chocolate and I still love it!
Mandarin chocolate cake is not very sweet so it’s totally ok to add ¼ cup of maple syrup or coconut sugar. Or honey if you are not vegan, honey goes really well together with all the citruses.
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Mandarin Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- grated zest of 2 mandarins
- 300 ml mandarin juice
- 2 bananas
- 500 ml gluten free oat flour
- 1,5 baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 100 ml raw cacao powder
- 100 ml almond milk
- 50 g cacao mass grated
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 375 F and grease a round 8-inch cake tin with oil. You can dust the tin with flour too to make sure the cake will come out of it.
- Grate the zest of two mandarins in a large mixing bowl. Squeeze the juices of from 3 to 5 mandarins in the bowl too.
- Peel two bananas and mix and mash them with a fork. Add the banana mash in the mandarin juice.
- Combine together all the rest of the ingredients and add the mixture in the bowl with bananas and mandarins.
- Mix well and spoon the batter into the cake tin.
- Bake for about 45 minutes.
- Let the cake cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Then remove it from the tin and let it cool well on a cooling rack.
- The ganache can’t be spread on a hot cake.
- Heat the almond milk a little. It shouldn’t boil. If it gets too hot, let it cool before adding the chocolate. Even just 48 C should be enough.
- Add the grated cacao mass in the almond milk and stir until the cacao has completely melted.
- Add the syrup
- Let the ganache cool to room temperature (or little under) and spoon it on the cake.
Tips
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