Vegan Hazelnut Cake

Dear Reader, don’t judge a cake by its blog photo. Once again, I have failed to take a decent picture of a decent cake!

Also: the things you do for people you like! Last night, I cooked a three-course vegan meal for six people. (Out of which only two are actually vegan but … you know what it’s like. A chain is always only as good as its weakest link.) NO, I did not say that!

What I meant was: I love a challenge, as you know. So why not make a vegan meal. Also, there was some fried chicken for my devout carnivore friends to add to the vegan main course (because I like them. And I like undermining things like that.) But I chose the all-vegan option and the meal was lovely in my humble opinion.

The first two courses were Indian; I served a garam masala salad with mangoes as a starter, and then there was a Jalfreezi chickpea curry with two kinds of rice (turmeric and coconut & spring onion). I really liked it and none of my friends left to get pizza, so I’m guessing they liked it well enough as well.

For dessert, I baked a cake! Now there’s a surprise.

I used this recipe [Language warning: German] and followed the instructions almost to a t. I didn’t like that, because following instructions goes against my nature as you know. But sometimes you just have to suck it up. And be a grown-up about it. (And make plans for all the things you are going to do differently just because you can the next time!)

So, here’s my recipe, a minor variation. The cake was hazelnutty and chocolatey and really moist and yum. I highly recommend it, to vegans and non-vegans alike. We’re all equal in the eyes of cake.

Vegan Hazelnut Cake Recipe

Ingredients
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
250 g ground hazelnuts (+ extra)
2 tbsp cocoa
180 g icing sugar
120 g margarine (+ extra)
½ l soy milk
plum, almond & rum jam*
200 g dark chocolate (I bought the kind for which you have to pay extra because they print “vegan” on the packaging, just to be safe)
2 tbsp oil
chopped hazelnuts

Method
Combine the flour, baking powder, ground hazelnuts and cocoa. Even better: make your non-baking boyfriend do it and watch him complain that that’s not as easy as he thought it was. Give him a smug look. (The cake will more than make up for the damage you have just done to your relationship. Unless he’s a non-cake-eating person. In which case he is not a real human and you should not be with him anyway.)
In a separate bowl, beat margarine and icing sugar until fluffy, then add the dry ingredients and the soy milk. Give it all a good stir.
Grease a 26 cm cake mould with margarine and spread some ground hazelnuts to cover the surface. Pour in your cake batter.
Bake the cake at 180°C for about 50 minutes.
Remove from oven, let cool a little bit, then spread jam on top. Let cool some more, then spread ground hazelnuts on top of the jam. Now flip the cake onto a plate and remove the cake mould. Spread some more jam on what’s now the top of your cake. Let the cake cool completey.
In a bain-marie melt the cocolate. Stir in the oil and cover the cake with your chocolate coating. Use chopped hazelnuts for decoration purposes.

* A note on jam. I think you could use any good (= home-made!) jam for this cake. My own home-made jams, when including rum, tend to be quite on the rummy side, and I thought that added a nice note to the cake.