Chocolate Banana Cake

White vinegar: it’ll clean your windows and mirrors, de-scale your teapot, and make your vegan cake rise.

For this week’s baking, I wanted an agave-sweetened chocolate cake to share with my roommate. My mom and I remade 6-Minute Chocolate Cake in 2011 with Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free baking flour. Bad idea, as the chickpea flour made it taste like plastic. Look, ma, chocolate cake!

Chocolate Banana Cake

Modified from the Moosewood 6-Minute Chocolate Cake, modified from http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/print?id=133387

1/2 cup GF oat flour

1/2 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

dash cinnamon

2 ripe bananas (about 1/2 cup banana, mashed)

1/2 cup agave nectar

1/4 cup canola or melted coconut oil

3/4 cup water

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons vinegar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan, cut a circle of parchment to fit the bottom, and then grease the parchment.

In a large bowl, sift then whisk together the dry ingredients.

In a large measuring cup or blender, blitz the wet ingredients minus the vinegar until uniformly combined. Add the wet to the dry and stir until mostly combined. Working quickly, add the vinegar and stir until the batter is lightened in colour (a few strokes!). Pour into the prepared pan and place in the oven.

Bake for 27-30 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test, the top springs back to the touch, and the top has slightly cracked. Cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

I used my nice cake server to cut the cake when I had a piece. A few years ago, my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said I wanted a nice cake server and a functional cake server. The nice cake server because I’m not getting married and won’t have an occasion to get nice china. The functional cake server because I don’t want to scratch my pans.