This month Greenstone Belly Dance is celebrating its third birthday! We’re excited to celebrate with some free events this Sunday the 18th of July. We’ll begin in the morning with an in-person dance class and birthday picnic in Delft, then we have our online events in the event, starting off with a belly dance quiz, followed by a performance watch party! See the full schedule on our events page.
For those of you joining us in Delft, the Netherlands, we will be supplying cake! But we do invite you to bring a plate of something to share, if you wish. For those of you joining us online, we thought we’d share our 2021 birthday cake recipe with you!
This chocolate cake is vegan-friendly, and it’s based off the Ultimate Vegan Chocolate Cake from “It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken.” I’ve been making this cake for a couple of years, so I’ve experimented with how I like making it!
Dry ingredients:
1 cup wholemeal flour*
1.5 cups white flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1 big teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 small teaspoon salt
*No wholemeal flour? No worries! Just make it 2.5 cups of standard flour instead
Wet ingredients:
2 cups plant-based milk (e.g. almond, oat)*
2/3 cup neutral oil (e.g. canola or vegetable; don’t use a flavourful oil like olive)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Optional: Frozen raspberries
*No plant-based milk? If you’re not vegan, I often use regular milk
Instructions:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C/350F. Lightly grease your cake tin or cupcake tin (I really like making these as cupcakes).
Whisk together all the dry ingredients.
Whisk together all the wet ingredients.
Combine wet and dry ingredients and whisk until just combined.
Instructions:
Pour the batter into your cake tin, or 12 cupcake moulds.
If baking cupcakes, optionally add 3-5 frozen raspberries on top of each filled cupcake mould.*
*In my experience, the frozen raspberries seem to work better on cupcakes than in a standard cake. I’m a dancer, not a baker, don’t ask me why!
Instructions:
If baking a cake, bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. For cupcakes, bake for roughly 20 minutes; keep an eye on them and also use the knife method.
Then let them cool a little before you remove them from their moulds/the tin, then enjoy!
Let me know if you make this at home! I’d love to know if you put your own spin on it. This cake is really fudgy, so I usually don’t put an icing on top. Icing is definitely optional if you want to go ahead and add some.
