Sourdough Snacking Cake

If you are craving a rich, dense and decadently chocolatey dessert, this vegan snack cake is for you! While it is definitely sweet, the addition of sourdough starter (which I know a lot of you have lying around!) adds a hint of tang and lightens up the recipe, enticing you back for more!

While I didn't hop on the sourdough bandwagon as much as some people did during the last few months, I was definitely inspired to break out my (often neglected) starter to get some use out of it after all the articles cropped up online. I had made sourdough chocolate cake once before so I knew it was a sure-fire winner, but never recorded the recipe I used. Thankfully, many other people had the same idea I did, and not only that but some of the vegan community did as well!

This recipe was a combination of a few recipes I had saved, with my own twists for good measure. I only had oat-based creamer at home (I don't drink "milk" so I rarely buy any) and I had the end of a bag of spelt flour to use up, so those went into the mix. I knew I wanted to add coffee to heighten the chocolate flavour (especially since natural cocoa isn't as "deep" as Dutch process) but I only had French Vanilla flavoured instant - in that went! After all, I figured, all those things work with chocolate, and it was worth a try.

All in all, these changes served to make (in my opinion) a richer, nuttier flavoured cake with a solid "mocha" note, almost like those cappuccino mixes you used to find in the 90's. The tang from the sourdough was present but not overwhelming, almost like a red velvet cake, and I think you could definitely make red velvet cake out of this recipe by adding food colouring and frosting! For weeknights (or, lets face it, Blursday afternoons), this cake, unadorned, is perfect as is. I would suggest adding the chocolate chips halfway through the baking process or right after, as when I added them before (as written in the recipe), they settled into a layer in the middle. Not a bad thing - just not a layer of gooey goodness on top. Or you could do both - there are no rules!

Nana Cake

 N used to eat a variation of this cake every year for his birthday, when his nana made it for him. Today's revamp is a rich, whole grain spice cake topped with homemade blueberry pie filling and Chantilly cream. Different yet decadent!

In the midst of all this last-minute "re-learning" with online schooling - as both teacher and student - March and April have basically been non-starters for writing on this blog. If you are still tuned in, thank you for your patience! I have been cooking here and there (despite how difficult grocery shopping has become) and you can always find my latest yums on Instagram as well - I will get to the recipes on here one day!

Anyways, this cake is far more than it's relatively simplistic construction. N's birthday was back in December (see how far behind I am?) but when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he told me a story of the kind his grandmother used to make for him right up until she passed away. It was simple in essence - a baked box-mix cake topped with a can of pie filling and a tub of Cool Whip - but he adored it and confided that he wished he could have it again. When I asked if a homemade version would suffice (I hate box cake mix as a rule - not because of the ingredients but because of the sound our hand beaters make mixing it) he was excited and gave me free reign, as long as it wasn't chocolate. Perfect - I had a ton of odds and ends around the pantry and fridge after a month of sweet baking with Home Economics, so I quickly settled on a spice cake, and the ends of that fall's blueberries that I had frozen became the filling. 

Of course, I can't set out baking something and not tweak it! I knew I wanted to keep the flavour profile relatively rustic and traditional, so I went with a combo of oats and whole wheat flour in addition to the "white" stuff and used my own (homemade) pumpkin pie spice to add fresh and pronounced flavour. The pie filling was kissed with spices and orange and capped off with a tiny dose of orange flower water for just a little touch of flair. Both components also took advantage of the toasted sugar I had made up every few months after discovering the recipe and I'm glad I made that call - everything smelled cozy and warming. 

I toted all three components - cake, filling and whipped cream - separately to his place and assembled the "nana cake" there. Let me tell you - it didn't last very long, even with the rest of the seasonal sweets abounding!