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I recently had a birthday and decided last minute to bake myself a cake since we were meeting friends for dinner.  I LOVE chocolate and remembered seeing this recipe by the awesome Stella Parks (BraveTart).  It turns out that this is a super easy super delicious cake that is actually vegan and almost flourless (no eggs or dairy).  Also what flour is in it is all whole wheat.  It is practically healthy especially for a cake.  The cake is super tender but I’m still shocked that something with such a simple ingredient list can bake into a cake.

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Why It Works

• Acidic ingredients, like coffee and brown sugar, activate the baking soda, giving the cake its rise.
• Dutch cocoa powder is dark and higher in fat than natural styles, making a rich and flavorful cake.
• Olive oil can provide the cake with a mild and buttery richness or a bolder pop of flavor, depending on the style.
• Whole wheat flour lends a subtle nuttiness to the cake, rounding out its flavor.

Ingredients

• 4 ounces light or dark brown sugar (about 1/2 cup, firmly packed; 115g)
• 1 1/2 ounces high-fat Dutch cocoa (about 1/2 cup; 42g); see our top Dutch cocoa picks for recommendations (see note)
• Shy 1/2 teaspoon (1.75g) Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use about half as much by volume or the same weight
• 3/4 teaspoon (4.8g) baking soda
• 4 1/2 ounces extra-virgin olive oil (about 2/3 cup; 127g)
• 4 ounces brewed black coffee, or black tea such as Assam (about 1/2 cup; 115g), any temperature
• 2 large eggs (about 3 1/2 ounces; 100g), straight from the fridge
• 1/4 ounce vanilla extract (about 1 1/2 teaspoons; 7g)
• 2 1/2 ounces whole wheat flour, such as Bob's Red Mill (about 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons; 70g)
• Optional garnishes: powdered sugar, preferably organic (see our explainer on organic powdered sugar for more information), or fresh fruit

Directions

Getting Ready: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat to 350°F (180°C). Line an 8- by 3-inch anodized roundaluminum pan with parchment (see our explanation and tutorial on how to cut a parchment round) and grease lightly with pan spray.

For the Cake: In a medium mixing bowl, combine brown sugar, Dutch cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. Whisk until homogeneous, with no visible clumps of cocoa or baking soda (although a few lumps of brown sugar may remain), about 1 minute. Under-mixing will give the cake an uneven texture and rise, so don't rush this step.

Whisk in olive oil, brewed coffee, eggs, and vanilla. When mixture is smooth and well emulsified, add whole wheat flour and continue mixing only until combined. Scrape into prepared pan. Bake until cake is firm but your finger can still leave an impression in the puffy crust, about 25 minutes. (A toothpick inserted into the center should come away with a few crumbs still attached.)

Cool cake directly in pan for 1 hour, then run a butter knife around the edges to loosen. Invert onto a wire rack, peel off parchment, and place cake right side up on a serving platter or cake stand. Serve plain, with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, or with fresh fruit.

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2019/04/dairy-free-chocolate-cake.html

Now I served this with whipped cream so it was no longer vegan, but the cake was even delicious without the macerated strawberries and whipped cream so could easily be served to vegans.

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My index of bakes

Almost exactly two years ago, I stopped lurking on this site and finally posted something - a plea for help.  I had been making panettone with a liquid sourdough starter for a few years before switching to a lievito madre and I could not figure out why my dough was turning to soup when adding the butter.  Looking back, the key thing I didn't realize was just how little I understood about the process.

Fast forward two years and another desperate post trying to make sense of all this and I've finally found some success in making panettone leavened with lievito madre.  I've lost count of how many times I've failed over those two years - primi that didn't rise, secondi that turned to soup, flat tops, blowouts, panettoni falling out of the mold - the list goes on.  I often failed spectacularly.  So many ingredients in the trash and so much disappointment and frustration often met by friends and family with "Why bother? Can't you just buy one?".

I followed EIDB's panettone recipe from Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie.  This is the recipe I started with a few years ago, thinking I should try the recipe by the person who wrote the book, not having realized that the book both literally and figuratively had already been written in one way or another by the maestri featured in SPV, among some others.  At the time, I wasn't familiar with the maestri or their formulas, but even after discovering them, I wanted to continue using the same formula to eliminate variables when things went wrong, as they often did.  At one point, when butter was my nemesis, I scrutinized all of the formulas in SPV to try and find one that didn't contain an outrageous amount of butter and found that EIDB's wasn't too bad in that regard, so I stuck with it.

In the past, I used whatever strong flours I had access to, which all happened to be malted.  At some point, I decided that malted flours were a bad idea, at least until I had enough experience to deal with them.  I could never get them to work, so when I created my new LM I used Caputo's Manitoba Oro, which I also used for the primo and secondo.

I did modify the formula a bit. Rather than orange paste, I used orange and lemon zest along with vanilla bean.  I did not add the bassinage water because the recipe says something like "add the bassinage water if necessary" and I was never really sure what necessitated bassinage water.  Given my history of failed secondi, I thought it best to leave it out.  For inclusions, I used white and dark chocolate since candying orange peel was something I gave up when the end product seemed to constantly be in question.

I guess the most important part, my LM, was not maintained according to any specific formula or plan.  For the most part, my LM is constantly in maintenance mode with a single refreshment before letting it rest for nearly 24 hours at 16 - 17C.  A few times a week I will expose it to heat with either a warm refreshment or hot bagnetto.  I typically keep the LM in water, but if I notice it getting sluggish or not rising well, I'll use free maintenance for a few days.  If I know that I won't be able to refresh it for a day or two, I bind it and put it in the fridge.  It's all a balancing act between my schedule and what the LM seems to need.  I do tend to push it pretty hard towards acetic since the failures still leave me with a really good loaf of bread.

I played a little bit with refreshment ratios along the way as well.  I noticed that refreshing 1:1 (starter:flour) and leaving at 16 - 17C for 20 - 24 hours would yield a pH right around 4.0, but refreshing 1:2 with all else kept the same would yield a pH of 3.8 - 3.9, but with a less dramatic rise.  Seeing how higher flour ratios would drive pH lower, I also experimented with ratios during the warm refreshments.  For this bake, I refreshed 1:1.25 at 28C (about 5.5 hrs) for the first followed by 1:1 at 28C (about 4hrs) for the second.  I didn't perform a 3rd.  Two refreshments in this way also wound up being a lot more convenient with my schedule.  Regardless of the warm refreshments, I can't seem to hit 4.0 - 4.1.  Once the starter has tripled, I've been using the LM at around pH 4.15 - 4.25, though I've been trying to get sub 4.1 to see if it helps at all with primo acidification.

I still had issues, of course, the main one being the seemingly infamous primo acidification.  I think my primo was about pH 4.3 by the time it had tripled.  It also tripled in only about 10 hours which is very fast considering I closed the primo at about 22C.  The panettone also seemed to get a bit darker than I wanted.  I set my oven according to a thermometer placed on the rack where the panettone would go, but I guess that means that maybe higher up in the oven, where the panettone would rise, was too hot.  In the past, I glazed most of the panettoni I've baked and hadn't had this problem, but after many flat tops I decided not to glaze, thinking that the glaze was maybe hardening early and preventing some oven spring.

In any case, the panettone was delicious.  So light and delicate that it was almost difficult to slice, yet strong enough to hold its shape and pass the "cotton candy test".  Not quite where I want it to be, but a massive success for me nonetheless.

Edit: A picture of the crumb from the second loaf from the same batch, cut one week after baking.  I didn't butcher this one as much when slicing it.  This one was a bit darker on the outside and cooked to a higher internal temperature (unintentionally - used a different oven that I'm not as used to), so I thought this one would be in rough shape but I'm very happy with this crumb.

I really went for it - the bake right before this resulted in the panettone falling out of the mold when I hung it. So, a few days later I decided to change almost nothing and bake 2 instead of 1 😅.  The previous bake was glazed - I wonder if I went too heavy on the glaze, weighing down the dome and causing it to fall.  My LM was not significantly different between the two bakes - certainly not "fall from the mold" lactic.

Very successful and as simple as it gets.

Preferment: 2 cups wholegrain rye flour,  2 heaping tablespoons of rye starter from the fridge,  enough water to make a soft dough.  Place in lukewarm spot for a couple of hours, then move to a cooler place fir the rest if the fermentation (total of 18-24 hours) 

Final dough: whole amount of the preferment,  4 generous cups of wholegrain rye flour,  golden flax seeds (I shook them straight from the bag), salt to taste (about a tablespoon) enough warm (not hot!) water to obtain a soft but cohesive dough. Mix everything by hand,  let rest in the bowl for 20-30 minutes then move into the prepared loaf pan.  Proof, covered, in a lukewarm spot until it crowns over the rim of the pan. Paint with leftover thinned dough, dock with a chopstick,  bake in preheated oven without steam 15 min at 475, 15 at 425 and 15 at 400 ir until done. After 30 minutes of baking paint the surface again and sprinkle with lots of flaxseeds. 

I wanted to make a special bread for Christmas and the Lithuanian Christmas Bread from Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker fit the bill. The bread is 100% rye and has a whopping 45% fruit added (prunes, apricots, and raisins). The recipe specifies 76% white rye and 24% medium rye. I don’t have any white rye flour so I made it with all medium rye (King Arthur) and increased the hydration from 70% to 75% to compensate.

The recipe starts with a two-stage sponge: the first stage is at 83% hydration and the second brings the hydration up to 100% overall. The final dough has honey, the fruit, and a small amount (2%) of red rye malt added. I opted to use fermented rye malt instead because that seems to be a more traditional additive in Baltic region breads.

The dough is placed directly in the loaf pan and the bulk/proof is conducted warmer than usual. Ginsberg’s instructions are to preheat the oven to 38 °C (100 °F) and turn off. My proof was slow so I occasionally, and carefully, applied heat to the oven and kept the oven light on to keep it warm. I let the dough rise for 4.75 h but it still hadn’t reached the rim of the pan. It’s probably the combination of all medium rye and a weaker than optimum rye sour culture. There may also be a slight inhibitory effect from the apricots. I did not have unsulfured apricots as required and the sulfite may have had a negative effect on the yeast.

I baked the loaf 10 min longer because some of the rye breads I’ve made have been a little sticky. I think maybe an extra 5 min would have been enough as the crust got a little darker than intended.

After waiting ≈18 h, the bread was cut for Christmas Eve. The crumb is firm and almost cake-like. All the flavors of the rye, fruit, and malt blend beautifully in this bread. A non-rye fan was converted—a Christmas miracle!

Merry Christmas everyone!