Vegan Rocky Road Cake {Guest Post from Gormandize with A-dizzle & K-bobo}

Vegan Rocky Road Cake

Ingredients:

Cake

• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 2 cups coconut milk
• ½ cup soy milk
• 2/3 cup coconut oil
• 2 cups wholemeal plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarb soda
• 2 cups desiccated coconut (unsweetened)
• 100g dark chocolate (anything over 70% should be vegan if it’s decent quality)

Filling/Topping

• 1 can coconut cream, chilled in the fridge for 2-3 days (minimum over night)
• 2 tsp rosewater
• 2 tbsp soft icing mixture
• 150g Turkish delight, cut into 1cm x 1cm cubes and rolled in icing sugar (you may have to cut it up yourself if it comes in big pieces)
• 100g whole red glace cherries
• 100g slivered almonds
• 1/3 cup coconut flakes
• 100g dark chocolate (see above)

To Make:

1. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees.
2. Whisk the sugar, coconut milk and soy milk together.
3. Heat the coconut milk gently in a saucepan until completely liquidified (my spellcheck says this isn’t a work but I have to beg to differ!)
4. Whisk the coconut milk into the other liquid ingredients.
5. Sift in all the dry ingredients into the batter and mix through.
6. Melt the chocolate. You can do this in a double boiler if you have one, or if you have your own tried and true method then use that! If you’re not sure, check the note down the bottom for how I always melt chocolate. Stir the melted chocolate through the batter.
7. Grease a 21-23cm springform cake tin and line the bottom with greaseproof baking paper. Pour the batter in.
8. Bake for 45 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean when inserted in the centre.
9. Allow it to cool in the tin for about 20 minutes before turning it out onto a cooling rack.

While it’s cooling, you can make the filling and toppings….

1. Take the can of coconut cream out of the fridge.
2. When you open the tin you will notice that the top is a very solid thick cream. Scoop out all of the solid thick cream on top (you can reserve the rest of it to use in another meal – like a curry).
3. Put the thick cream into a bowl and mix well using a hand held electric mixer. Move the beaters up and down to try and get as much air into the cream as possible. Add the sugar and rosewater and beat until it pretty much resembles thick cream. Set aside.
4. Mix the Turkish delight, glace cherries, slivered almonds and coconut flakes together in a bowl. You may have to add a touch of icing sugar if it all starts sticking together too much.

To Assemble:

1. Once the cake is completely cooled, carefully cut it in half lengthways to make two layers of about the same thickness.
2. Spread about 2/3 of the whipped coconut cream on the top of the bottom layer and gently place the top half of the cake on top – no need to press it down.
3. Spread the remaining cream on the top of the cake and use it as adhesive to stick all the rocky road mix on top. Pile it up – it looks cool in a big mound.
4. Melt the second block of chocolate (see note on melting chocolate below) and drizzle it over the top of the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Hint: The chocolate on the top will crack lots as you cut it to serve and generally it will be a big mess – that’s ok! Rocky road is meant to be a big delicious mess! But to minimise this, take the cake out of the fridge for 15-20 minutes before you serve it up to allow the chocolate to soften a little.

NOTE: To Melt Chocolate…

Boil the kettle and fill a small saucepan with boiling hot water (no need to put it on the heat though). Chop the chocolate up and put it in a small (and completely dry) metallic mixing bowl. Place the mixing bowl over the saucepan of boiling water and stir until the chocolate has melted, the bowl will just float on the surface of the water and the metal will evenly distribute the heat to melt it evenly.