Chocolate Avocado Cake

On Sunday night I told Tara I would make her a 21st cake, considering her birthday is today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAN) but her party (complete with cake!) isn't for another two weeks. I had great plans to get up early today and find a recipe before I went shopping, and then I woke up late and Gordo (so named for his resemblance to this guy right here) finished uni early so it was a GIANT. CATASTROPHE.

So when I got home, after blatantly lying to Tara and saying I wasn't going to make her a cake at all (tee hee!), I had to find a recipe that wouldn't involve me having to walk down to the shops to buy more stuff. I had just gotten home from grocery shopping, gimme a break. Luckily, I am meticulous with bookmarking recipes I think sound lovely and in my "Sweets" file I found this! I got the recipe from Not Quite Nigella, who got the recipe from Joy the Baker, who I think got it from a cookbook?

I tweaked the recipe a bit - less out of choice or experimentation than necessity. I halved the recipe rather than making a layered cake, used wholemeal flour, used less cocoa powder (we ran out, and I didn't think Milo would work as a substitute) and used raw instead of brown sugar (which I only just realised now, while writing the recipe out).

The dividing lines in the ingredients are just so you don't do what I did and forget to separate the wet and dry ingredients. Balls.

The best bit was, I didn't tell anyone it was an avocado cake until AFTER they'd eaten it, lest they protest about even trying the cake. It worked, everyone liked it! I also covered it with Milo butter icing, which was delicious (and needless to say, makes it decidedly un-vegan... but otherwise, we're good).

CHOCOLATE AVOCADO CAKE

1.5 cups plain wholemeal flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened)

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

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1 cup raw sugar

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1/8 cup olive oil

1/4 cup soft avocado, mashed

1 cup water

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease the cake tin.

2. Combine all of the dry ingedients, sans sugar (everything until the first dotted line).

3. Combine all of the wet ingredients (the last part of the ingredients list). Add the sugar and combine.

4. Add the wet mix to the dry mix and whisk (by hand!) until smooth. Pour into the baking dish and cook for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.