Chocolate Avocado Cake

id="recipetitle"class="fn">Chocolate Avocado Cake

Avocados are pretty much my favorite food.  Over time I have become a pseudo vegetarian. I define this as; I don't buy or cook meat for myself, and I don't eat meat when I'm out unless it's terribly inconvenient to avoid it. So, naturally when I found out that you could make a cake with avocados I was fairly excited.

There are so many awesome things about this cake. First of all, this cake is vegetarian by nature, but can easily be made vegan by substituting the milk for soy, or another non-dairy alternative. Substituting the dairy milk also makes this lactose free, as the avocado replaces the need for butter. The most impressive thing about this cake is that despite it lacking so many of your standard cake ingredients, it is actually the best chocolate cake I've ever had.


INGREDIENTS

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup of avocado, well mashed (about 1 avocado)
1 cup milk (dairy, soy. almond)
1 cup hot water
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips


DIRECTIONS (for cake)

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a 9x12 inch cake pan by greasing and flouring (or cocoa powdering) the bottom only. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

2) In another medium bowl combine the vegetable oil, avocado, milk, hot water, vinegar and vanilla extract. Stir in the sugar.

3) Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips.

4) Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs.

I chose not to add anything to the top of this cake as I felt it was rich enough (plus it keeps it lactose free/vegan that way). But you could definitely dress this up with either a ganache or a chocolate buttercream if you so desire. 


DIRECTIONS (for cupcakes)

Same as above except prepare a muffin tin with liners and bake for approximately 25 minutes. For my cupcakes I omitted the chocolate chips, and instead topped with chocolate frosting from  Extreme Chocolate Cake. These were a massive hit.