I don’t bake cakes from scratch, ever. Maybe it’s the quarantine and endless scrolling through YouTube that got me. I stumbled on this video and was drawn in by the cook, Jenny, her outfit, and colorful kitchen. I wanted to feel the joy she did when making this recipe! It’s technically vegan because there’s no butter or eggs. Her frosting does use butter but I replaced it with a nut butter “frosting” (see below). I also only had whole wheat flour in the kitchen, so used that instead of all purpose flour, but the texture was surprisingly moist and tender anyway.

My cake came out exactly as Jenny described it, and was firm enough to effortlessly slide onto a plate. From there, I put about 1/2 cup dark chocolate almond butter in a microwave-safe bowl (another option is 88 Acres Dark Chocolate Sunflower Seed Butter). Melt in the microwave on high for about 15 seconds until it’s almost liquid; stir. You can add some chocolate chips to the nut butter before microwaving if you’d like a deeper chocolate flavor. It spread very easily onto the cooled cake!

I love nut butter as a “frosting” because it’s rich with unsaturated fats but low in sugar. The cake is sweet enough so that you don’t really need another layer of a super-sweet frosting. And it’s so much easier to prepare than blending 3-4 different ingredients! Hope you try it, or at least enjoy the video of Jenny 🙂