This is simply the BEST vegan chocolate Christmas cake recipe that you have to try!
I like Christmas cake but I don’t love it. Yet every year I’d find myself soaking fruit, baking a huge cake, feeding it booze for a month and then cutting a slice on Christmas day and vowing that next year I wouldn’t bother. It’s not that my Christmas cakes weren’t good it was just that with a partner who is not a fan of fruit cakes I would find the first weeks in January filled with fruitcake.
For a while I thought it must be the flavour of brandy, because who actually likes brandy? So I made a “Caribbean fruit cake” and filled it with rum. Still not a fan.
Eventually, just when I was about to give up I stumbled across a Gizzi Erskine recipe for a chocolate Christmas cake. I was willing to give it a try – but with my own twist of gin rather than Cointreau. It was a massive hit – even my fruit cake hating other half loves it (it’s become a bit of a battle to get a slice in this house). And as so many people have asked I thought I’d share it here.
I now make mine vegan but you can of course make this with butter and eggs if you like.
Here’s what you’ll need to make this Chocolate Christmas Cake:
- 175g vegan baking block (or butter if you prefer)
- 350g prunes, chopped
- 350g of other dried fruit – I use a mixture of cherries, sultanas and cranberries
- 50g mixed peel
- 80ml maple syrup
- 150ml Chocolate stout or porter
- 50ml gin (I use Ophir or Tanqueray Sevilla)
- 2 oranges – juice and zest
- 4 tbsp Cocoa powder
- Egg replacement equivalent to 3 eggs (I use Free and Easy)
- 150g plain flour
- 175g dark muscovado sugar
- 75g ground almonds
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Preheat your oven to 170oC
Prepare a 20cm cake tin by greasing the inside and lining with baking parchment. Wrap another layer of baking parchment around the outside of the tin and tie with string. Make sure that the layer of baking parchment on the outside is higher than the edges of the tin.
Time to get baking:
Put the baking block, fruit, maple syrup, stout, gin, orange juice and zest and cocoa powder in a pan and gently melt the baking block then give everything a good mix and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to stand for 30 minutes. This lets all the flavours infuse and the fruit to get nice and juicy.
While it’s cooling measure out the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, ground almonds, baking powder and bicarb) into a bowl and give them a good stir.
Once cooled take just under half of the fruit mix and put it in a blender with the egg replacement. Blend until its almost smooth.
Add the blended fruit mix and the rest of the fruit mix to the bowl of dry ingredients. Give everything a really good mix so that it’s all well blended – let everyone have a stir and make a wish! You should end up with a really thick cake mix that will be quite dark in colour.
Place the mix into the prepared cake tin and level out. Place in the oven for 1hr 45m – 2hrs. As the cake is quite dark it can be a little difficult to tell whether it’s done so stick a knife in the centre – it should come out slightly sticky.
Once baked let the cake cool a little before turning it out of the tin to cool fully. Once it’s completely cool wrap in cling film and store in a cake tin.
This cake can be eaten straight away but is best left to mature for several weeks. You don’t need to feed it more alcohol as this will overpower the chocolate flavour.
You can ice this cake in the traditional marzipan and royal icing but I like to cover mine in mascarpone and white chocolate icing.
Will you be trying this cake? Let me know how you get on!
Don’t forget to pin this chocolate Christmas cake recipe for later:
