Vegan Chocolate Cake with Vegan Vanilla Frosting

My nephew is celebrating his 4th Birthday today! And I've been wanting to post my vegan chocolate cake recipe for a while now, and today seems fitting since the reason I make vegan chocolate cake is because my nephew has severe milk and egg allergies. So, whenever he attends one of my girls' Birthday parties I make a cake he can enjoy. Because seriously, I can't deny anybody cake.

Unfortunately, the only picture of the cake that I have readily available is one I took of Evie's cupcakes back in March. And you can't see the chocolatey goodness from that picture. Not very well, anyway.

People seem to think making a cake allergen free is super difficult, and it really isn't. Not if you have a good recipe. This one is adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and should make 2 dozen cupcakes or a two 9 inch cake layers.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups soy milk (or rice milk)
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup dutch processed cocoa powder (The secret is to use Hershey's special dark cocoa powder. It's fabulous, and makes such a difference in the taste of the cake!
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease pans.

2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. In a separate bowl sift (I never sift... I don't even own a sifter) together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until no large lumps remain.

3. Poor into cake pans and bake 18-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. (I have to be honest here... this bake time may be totally off. When I make another cake I'll update it, but this is what the directions say. Just keep an eye on your cake.) Transfer to cooling rack.

For Evie's cake I used a vanilla frosting recipe, and that is as follows:

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup nonhydrogenated shortening
1 cup nonhydrogenated margarine (like Earth Balance)
7 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup soy (or rice) milk

DIRECTIONS:

1. Beat the shortening and margarine together until well combine and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the vanilla and soy milk, beat for another 5-7 minutes until fluffy.

This does make a lot of frosting. You may be able to get by with halving the recipe, but I find that I usually need about 2/3 of the recipe as is.

Happy Caking! And Happy Birthday to my nephew!