Best Chocolate Birthday Cake!

For my birthday, this past January, I wanted to have a vegan birthday cake.  I decided to make my own and have it for my birthday celebration.  I looked through all of my cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.  I found one that sounded perfect.  It was in her Vegan With A Vengeance cookbook. I LOVE chocolate and as the title above states, it is her Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting.  

The first paragraph of her recipe shared that it is a great birthday cake.  Everyone who tried it loved it and I made it again a few weeks later.

I used the ingredients stated below (unless changed in parenthesis), vegan, and organic.   

Here are the ingredients for the cake:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used pastry)

1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa power (I used cacao)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups rice or soy milk (I used almond)

1/2 cup canola oil

1 (10 oz) jar raspberry preserves (reserve 1/2 for batter)

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups sugar ( I used 1 cup)

Here are the ingredients for the icing:

3/4 cup soy creamer (I used 1/2 cup almond milk)

6 TBS non-hydrogenated margarine (I used 4 TSP)

10 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

If this recipe sounds like one you would love, check out her book Vegan with a Vengeance.  I found it in paperback on Amazon.  I only wish I had my birthday cake photo to share with you, but I can tell you that it was ALL gone by the end of the evening.  (HINT: When you make the icing, don't melt the margarine all the way so that it has a spreadable consistency.) This will be one of my favorite cakes to make again and again, particularly on special occasions.  LOVE IT! :-)

I've included a link below from a recipe/cooking vegan blog which includes photos of the baking of this cake; step by step.  If you would like to see the photos of the cake and read the step-by-step directions (ingredients may vary slightly on this blog from the original Isa recipe), then check out this link: Raspberry Blackout Cake