Chocolate cake, don’t we all need it once and a while?
I do, not even being a chocaholic I do crave chocolate cake sometimes.
But my needs are specific, I don’t want it to be to sweet, to spongy or to dry. I want a moist, firm cake with a bitter taste of chocolate and some nuts.
I spent years baking chocolate cakes trying to perfect the recipe, they all came out wrong. Some were to moist, to heavy, to sweet, to salt, to dry, to burned… you know the story.
A few weeks back Zita a fabulous vegetarian food blogger from Hungary I met in the summer, shared a vegan chocolate cake recipe with us, using whole grain and white spelt flour. I love Spelt, I use it for bread all the time but for some reason I’ve never tried using it to bake this cake before.
I decided I wanted to use Ricotta, because I had cake in our favorite Italian restaurant that had Ricotta in it and made it taste so creamy. That, and because I just LOVE Ricotta in every way.
The best chocolate cake I ever ate was in a small tearoom in Glastonbury when I was 18 years old, it was the first holiday I went on without my parents.
This means it took me 10 years to create a cake that equals that cake I ate in 2001.
To be fair, I didn’t bake for about 5 years. And perhaps the fact that I was on my first holiday alone had something to do with it.
But here it is, my favorite chocolate cake.
Ingredients
6 teaspoons of cocoa
2,5 teaspoons of full fat milk (I use raw milk)
250 gr of Ricotta (1 tub usually)
2 eggs (free range)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
150 gr wholemeal spelt flour
1,5 teaspoons of baking powder
150 gr of good quality salted butter (I used salted Jersey butter as I had some in the fridge)
140 gr of cane sugar
a handful of roasted hazelnuts and pecan or walnuts, crushed
a few pieces of the darkest chocolate you can find (I used Cote d’Or 86% noir)
Optional: about half a teaspoon of Whisky, you can leave this out or substitute with another type of liquor. It gives the cake that little extra touch.
Note: Spelt is not Gluten-free, some people may tolerate it better than others. For a completely Gluten-free cake you can use chestnut flour instead of spelt.
Method
Preheat your oven to 160° (gas)
Cover a baking tin with baking paper
1. Crush your hazel- and pecan nuts in a mortar, not too fine as we want bits in it
2. Mix your butter and the sugar, whisk until creamy.
3. Add the cocoa powder, the chocolate, the vanilla, the Whisky and the crushed chocolate to the butter mixture and stir.
4. Add the baking powder, 2 eggs and the milk to the flour and mix it together.
5. Add the Ricotta to the butter mixture and stir.
6. Add all of this to the flour mixture and stir well so you get an even batter.
7. Pour the batter into your baking thin and put in the oven for about 50 minutes.
When you take it out of the oven, leave it to cool in the baking tin.
Decorate with some icing sugar.
Enjoy!
Regula Ysewijn is a food writer, stylist and photographer, with a particular interest in historical recipes. he is a Great Taste Awards judge and a member of The Guild of Food Writers, as well as one of the two judges on 'Bake Off Vlaanderen', the Belgian version of 'The Great British Bake-Off'. A self-confessed Anglophile, she collects old British cookbooks and culinary equipment in order to help with her research. She is the author of 5 books: Pride and Pudding the history of British puddings savoury and sweet, Belgian Café Culture, the National Trust Book of Puddings, Brits Bakboek and Oats in the North, Wheat from the South. 
Hello! Just discovered your blog via foodgawker and it is lovely! Your food photography especially is gorgeous!
I feel the need to point out, however, that spelt is not gluten free (as it says in your foodgawker post), as it is a sub-species of wheat. It's a shame, because if it was I would definitely be making this recipe 🙂
Hi Aimee, thanks for your comment.
It came to my attention that Spelt can be eaten by quite a few people who are allergic to gluten. As Spelt does contain gluten but of a different kind. The people I know with an allergy for gluten always eat spelt and don't have any trouble digesting it.
However, because it is not the case for all people who are allergic to wheat or gluten I didn't add the tag 'gluten free' in my initial article.
I will email Foodgawker to remove the tag.
So glad you liked my blog.
If you would like to make this recipe you can substitute the spelt by chestnut flour.
Let me know how you get on!
Mmm.. This must be delicious 🙂 Lovely blog!
Hi Regula!
Thanks for mentioning me in your post. This cake looks absolutely yummie! I had one more ricotta left (Tuscany brought), I will make this! 🙂
Hi Zizi!
Let me know how it goes 🙂
Can't go wrong with ricotta from Tuscany!
Wonderful cake – I love the inclusion of whole grain spelt however, it's important to note that spelt is a cousin of wheat and although some tolerate it more comfortably than wheat, spelt is not a gluten free grain.
the top view picture is just beautifully scrumptious!
you're right, everyone needs a chocolate cake once in a while, and it's been too long since I baked my last chocolate cake (not counting our cake, to be improved, actually..)
Time to bake again! Love yours, with ricotta!
Even though I'm not a big fan of chocolate cakes, this one got my attention. It looks moist and soft, just the way I like it. Add ricotta and nuts and I'm sold. I think I may give it a try! 🙂
Juls, Sari, I love adding Ricotta to a recipe whenever I can. I just love it so much. This cake isn't too sweet, but has a good and strong chocolate taste, just the way I like it.