Vegan Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling

Charlie's grandma Jeanne is turning 90 this weekend! In celebration I made this cake. I took a Wilton cake decorating class last year but haven't tested out my skills since. The way we learned to decorate cakes in the class wasn't exactly health-the main frosting recipe we learned was based on shortening. So I set out to make a very special cake. I was worried that if it wasn't healthy, Charlie's grandmother wouldn't eat it. I didn't want it to taste healthy though. I also wanted it to be all natural and vegan. After looking through various recipes for ideas, this is the end result. I think it turned out well. It's not as healthy as eating a piece of fruit (although I did sneak 2 cups of fruits and veggies into this cake!), but as cakes go I think it's pretty good!

Cake batter:

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 1/4 cups flour (I used 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour)

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 Tsp Ener-G egg replacer + 1/4 cup water (you could use 2 eggs instead and omit oil)

2 Tbsp Canola oil

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups grated zucchini

additional water, if needed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then add wet ingredients. Stir until mixed, then add zucchini and stir until just blended. If the batter seems to dry, add more water, 2 Tbsp at a time until a better consistency. Coat 2-8 inch baking pans with cooking spray and pour mixture into pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes in pan then remove and completely cool on wire racks. This will make 2 short layers, if you want a tall cake you could double the recipe. The zucchini makes this very moist.

Raspberry filling: 

1/4 raspberries, fresh or frozen (thawed)

1/4 raspberry preserves

Puree raspberries then mix in preserves. This will spread pretty thin, if you wanted a thicker layer then you could use just preserves (but I find this to be too sweet). 

Chocolate frosting:

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup pureed raspberries (fresh or frozen, if you don't want the fruit you can sub water or soymilk)

1/2 cup cocoa powder

2 Tbsp water

2 Tbsp smooth peanut butter at room temperature (or you can use coconut oil)

I had to use an immersion blender to get this to come together, since the peanut butter is a little hard to mix in. If the consistency is too thick to spread, add more water, 1 Tbsp at a time. The peanut butter in the icing will make the icing harden int the refrigerator. Although this doesn't sound like a lot of icing, it spreads easily so I even had some leftover. It tastes completely sinful too. Eating it, I can tell that there's peanut butter in the frosting but it's not the dominant flavor and it's not bad.

Buttercream frosting (for keeping filling inside and for decorating the top)

1/4 cup softened butter or non-hydrogenated margarine ( I used organic earth balance, which is vegan)

2 Tbsp pureed raspberries (or other berries, for color, sub water for white frosting)

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, plus extra

Mix with a hand blender. Add powdered sugar if it's too thin, or water 1 tsp at a time if it's too thick. I had a lot of frosting left for the amount of decorating I did. I don't recommend making any less than this though because it will be hard to fill the pastry bag. I really like the flavor that the raspberries give the frosting. If I wasn't trying to cut down on the sugar I would consider doubling the recipe and frosting the whole cake with it!