Easy (Vegan) Chocolate Cake

I came home from a pretty long day today, and you know what I wanted? Chocolate Cake. I never want cake. I want fries and chips and bread and other salty goodness, but I never want cake. (Well except today clearly)

So I scrounged around cookbooks and found my super easy cake recipe I found in Belize, where I made more chocolate cake than I have in the rest of my life with the AMAZING local chocolate. And 40 minutes later - cake!

It's a vegan recipe, not because I went vegan in Belize but because I didn't always have eggs or milk and stores weren't always open when I was craving a local, sweet treat, so I found a milk/egg-less recipe to enjoy. I don't like icing so I also have a glaze recipe I put on this.

Anyway, I just finished the piece of cake I was craving but I have a whole rest of the pan leftover. Good thing I have girlfriends to pawn baking off to!

Yummy Cake!

Here's the easy recipe! Enjoy!

Easy Vegan Chocolate Cake
1+1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa, unsweetened - ideally from Belize if you've got it hanging around ;) 
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup veg oil
1 tsp vinegar (white or apple cider)

Preheat oven to 350F
Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt with a fork, mix it well.
Add water, vanilla, oil and vinegar. Blend well with a fork.
Bake at 350 for 30 min
Cool as long as you can stand. Today, that lasted approximately 3 minutes. If you're going to put glaze on it, do wait until it cools or the glaze will just get super liquidy and melt off the cake rather than stay on top with it's deliciousness.

Glaze 

1/2 cup sugar
4 tbsp margarine (butter if you're not vegan - I'm a real-butter-all-the-time kind of gal)
2 tbsp plain almond milk/soy milk/cow milk
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tbsp vanilla

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan over low-medium heat, stirring to prevent burning. Let it cool slightly before pouring over cake. If it hardens too much, just heat it back to liquid.
I read somewhere once that burning chocolate is considered a sin in some cultures. I would concur.

My New Love of Mason Jars

I was originally going to blog about the lovely dinner party my friend Jessica and I hosted in celebration of the Solstice, and it still kind of will be. But the biggest thing I learned during the prep was this:

MASON JARS ARE AMAZING! 

More on that in a second. First - Dinner Party. Sharing good food with good friends is definitely one of my favourite things to do. This night was no exception. 

My family helped me set the house up and set the table. My mom has fantastic colourful dishes so we set a happy, beautiful summer dinner party table. Lots of colours, flowers and sarongs/shawls on the chairs in case we got cold, and to add a punch of colour. 



Some menu highlights included fresh pea soup with cream, vegetable kebabs with homemade bbq sauce, my fresh garden tomatoes and quinoa cooked in vegetable broth. 


The serious highlight though? Dessert. 
Pies in mason jars. 


Rewind about a week, my mom and I were reorganizing the kitchen. We were redoing the spice and bulk cupboard and decided to use mason jars (various sizes) to hold spices, bulk lentils, nutritional yeast, etc. We stocked up on all sorts of sizes, and between those, some washed out old pasta sauce jars, and some labels, the cupboard is now super functional. Pies (apple pies and cherry pies) in mason jars. So begins my love affair with mason jars. 


After that, mason jars were everywhere! I saw browsing a diy site I love, ReadyMade, and saw this fun article: 10 things to do with Mason Jars Besides Store Stuff. Seriously?! Awesome! People are so creative! I followed the link for individual pie-in-a-jar and found this fantastic, happy, colourful blog! And had to rock the pie. 

Here's how I did it: (see their original post here) 
1. Make pasty. I used their basic pie crust recipe. 
2. Use the outer ring of the lid to cut tops for your pies. I cut one for the top, and one for the inside bottom of the jar. You could also top with a crumble, or a lattice top. 
3. Roll out the rest of your dough flat on a lightly floured surface. Cut long strips and work it onto the inside of the jar, pressing it flat against the jar so the entire inside is covered. It doesn't have to look nice, just be covered. 
4. Fill with your favourite pie filling. Here's my apple pie recipe, no idea where I got it but it's the one I always use. 

4 cups sliced apples (Green, Granny Smith apples, peeled)
*I cut the apples into smaller chunks since the pies will be smaller, 

but for big pie I leave them in slices. 

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp flour

1 cup white sugar

2 tbsp cold water

Combine apples, cinnamon, flour, sugar and water. Fill pre-arranged pastry. 

5. Cut a hole of some sort (I used a butterfly cookie cutter to make a summer-themed vent!) in the tops 

Step 6, Notice the butterflies

6. Place the tops onto the pies, and join the pastry together (squish it together with fingers or a fork). Just make sure all the pie is inside, not going over the top edge. 

7. Bake at 350 F for 50-60 minutes. Everyone asked if the glass would explode in the heat, but these jars are made to be boiled for canning, so it's all good. The blog suggested placing them in a cold oven, allowing them to heat up slowly. Makes sense to me so that's what I did.  

Step 8

8. Enjoy!! 

Alternate Step 7: Freeze them to enjoy the next time you crave pie! Simply put the lid on the jar and put it in your freezer. Handy tip: Using the inner, flat part of the lid as the stencil, I cut a circle of paper out to put in the lid for instructions.Write the instructions and type of pie on your label so anyone who wants it can use it! (Instructions: Remove lid, allow pie to come to room temperature, place in cold oven and bake at 350 F for 50 minutes). So baking them from frozen requires a bit of forethought since they need to thaw and bake for an hour, but what's a couple hours of wait when you can have fresh delicious apple pie in a jar! 

Easy as pie! 

Next on my list of mason jar adventure wishlist -> As a friend suggested : savory pies! Pot Pies, Shepherd's pie (There's a veganomicon recipe I've been waiting to try!), macaroni - my sister made this and it rocked!  The possibilities are endless! And this Magnetic Spice Rack looks so great! One day when I have a great kitchen of my own, it's going to be so organized and full of jars.