Chocolate and red wine come together to make magic in this vegan, whole wheat chocolate red wine cake. Perfect for your vegan valentine!

Only a serious loser would bake her own birthday cake, right? Right. So I will just gloss over the fact that my hubby and I ate this Chocolate Red Wine cake for my Birthday dessert last month, and focus on its suitability as a vegan valentines day dessert instead.

Chocolate and red wine contained within one bite? That is my idea of a good time. This is such a lovely variation on the traditional chocolate cake. I was first inspired by this recipe from the Smitten Kitchen, but used this recipe from Moosewood to make it vegan, and a little tweaking of my own to make it whole grain.

I definitely fall into the Valentines Day non-enthusiastic camp, but I will take it as an excuse to make this chocolate cake again. I mean, by birthday isn’t for another 11 months…

Enjoy!

Chocolate & Red Wine Cake

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

Chocolate and red wine come together to make magic in this vegan, whole wheat chocolate red wine cake. Perfect for your vegan valentine!

Author: Emma

Cuisine: Dessert

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• For cake:
• 1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour
• ⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup brown sugar*
• ½ cup safflower oil ( or other neutral vegetable oil)
• ¾ cup red wine
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• For Icing:
• ¾ cup dark chocolate chips
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp red wine
• water or almond milk to create desired consistency

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375F/190C
2. Line a 9 inch cake pan or grease liberally
3. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and sugar, set aside
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, wine, water and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the try, and mix until just combined. Quickly transfer to the cake pan
5. Add the vinegar to the mixture, and quickly stir until its evenly distributed throughout the cake batter
6. Bake for 35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, allow to cool for a few minutes in the palm before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely
7. Make the icing: place chocolate chips, vanilla and wine in a small microwavable bowl, microwave at 20 second increments, stirring between each blast. When the ingredients have completely melted together, you can stir water or almond milk to reach desired consistency
8. When the cake is completely cooled, smooth the icing over the cake

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Adapted from this recipe, and inspired by this one.

If you don’t have a microwave you can prepare the icing with a double broiler instead.