Adventures in Baking - The Best Chocolate Cake

I recently made, quite possibly, the best chocolate cake I have ever had. That said, if you don't like coconut, you should stop reading right now. Seriously, you should leave and go read one of my other fabulous posts. Also, if you don't like chocolate, why are you even reading a food blog at all? Unless you're my mom, and have a chocolate allergy, but love me enough to read this dribble. Ok, that's out of the way. We can begin.

My good friend, Michelle, recently told me through much laughter, that her husband asked if I was food obsessed. He started listing my food related activities: cooking/baking, Instagram food pics, this blog, watching competitive eaters on YouTube... What he probably doesn't know is that I also read about food. I love learning about new ingredients and the latest food trends. I have a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine (not sponsored) and I simply love cuddling up on a Saturday morning, and pouring through it, over a cup of coffee.  Occasionally I even make the recipes they share. This particular cake spoke to me. It's a flour-less cake. Which means it's gluten-free, and because it's made with coconut milk, it's also dairy-free. Typically these are not things I would care about, but I knew that making a flour-less cake would mean it would turn out incredibly rich, fudgy, and an absolute chocolate dream. This cake did not disappoint. Here's the link to the recipe.

As you all know, I have a lovely kitchen elf that does things like greasing the cake pan with delicious coconut oil. You want all six of your eggs to be room temp. So make sure to take them out of the fridge a few hours early. I promise you won't die from this. You're going to bake them any way. Also, make sure to double boil your chocolate so it doesn't burn. We cheated and put a heat safe bowl in the pot of water.

Let's see, what other tips do I have for you... I especially love dark chocolate, so I used a dark cocoa powder, instead of milk. As you can see above, It creates a arguably appealing, almost black cake, and it came out clean because of the parchment paper. Make sure you buy parchment paper! I also used almond flour (I already had this from making macarons). Almond flour is pretty spendy, but if you want to save the time of grinding almonds yourself, this is the way to go.

The almonds-coconut clusters are optional, but I do think they're awfully pretty. The ganache is made with coconut milk, which I've never thought to do. It turned out perfectly, and would be a wonderful vegan frosting option. I will definitely be making that again. I want to pour it over all my foods, well, the sweet ones at least. I encourage you to try this recipe. If you do, please share, and always let your camera eat first.