I made this for my kindergartener’s sixth birthday. He’s been single-mindedly obsessed with trucks since he was 8 months old, so we made a chocolate construction site per his request. This is a slight variation on Joanne Chang’s Vegan Chocolate Cake recipe.
I love Joanne Chang; she’s one of my all-time baking role models. She owns the Flour bakery chain in Boston, and I’ve made sooo many recipes from her first cookbook. If you want to learn how to really, really, really bake well, Chang’s cookbook is a great resource and I can’t plug it enough. (Also, her other books, Pastry Love! and Baking With Less Sugar) I’ve learned a huge amount from all her books, and I can’t recommend it enough for anyone who wants to get awesome at baking.
Anyway, sad to say, my husband had a heart attack and I have a malfunctional gallbladder, so we can’t eat rich butter-laden cakes anymore. I love Joanne Chang’s vegan chocolate cake because it’s so light and chocolate-y and easy.
My son was overjoyed to receive this toy tractor spreader. The tractor spreader is, like, the one truck he doesn’t have yet.
Impact hammer smashing up Whoppers
I frosted the cake because I needed frosting for the full “construction site” effect, but this cake is also delicious without frosting — just a sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar will do. Some cherry compote would be a delicious, heart-healthy topping for this cake! (If you don’t put whipped cream or butter on top, this is a vegan cake recipe.)
If you’re gonna frost it, there just aren’t a lot of ways to do a “low-fat” frosting (although vegan frosting is easy enough with margarine, Earth Balance or vegetable shortening!)
Whipped cream is light and airy and therefore, lower-in-calories than, say, a buttercream. But you’ll still need to use full-fat heavy whipping cream in order to get it to “whip” up. This is a once-in-a-while treat for birthday parties!
Now, I will shill you some products I used to make this cake:
I used a cake leveler to make this particular cake. It’s the best-possible tool to use for cutting a cake into nice, even layers. I sliced off the domed top of the cake and used those scraps to make “dirt” for the construction site. A cake leveler is a cake-decorating must-have.
You don’t need a pastry bag for a construction-site cake, because it’s supposed to be “messy;” perfection isn’t necessary. However, a pastry bag will make your life a lot easier with cake-decorating or any type of pastry-making in general. I use this one.
A Wilton #1A piping tip is a great all-purpose one for piping macarons, eclairs, baked doughnuts, or piping out “frosting barriers” to hold layer cakes together.
This is a small cake, so I used a 6-inch baking pan
I always use an angled spatula like this one to frost cakes because they’re easier to maneuver than butter knives or straight spatulas.
Do I sound like I’m trying to shill for Wilton? Well, I took four of their cake decorating courses back in 2015, so I have all their cake decorating stuff. 8 years later, it’s still holding up. How I get paid for all the shilling I’ve done in this entry? I should figure this out soon.
Low Fat Chocolate Cake
Equipment
- 1 6-inch cake pan
- 1 electric beater or stand mixer
- 1 cake leveler
- 1 pastry bag
- 1 large round decorating tip
- 1 angled spatula
Ingredients
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup cocoa powder
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon instant coffee powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup water
- 2 tablespoon applesauce
- 2 tablespoon canola oil
- 2 tablespoon molasses
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting
- 1½ cups heavy whipping cream
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Bake the cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F
- Lightly spritz a 6-inch cake pan with nonstick spray. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of flour into the pan and shake it around until the inside of the pan is completely coated in flour. Dump out any extra flour, and tap the pan a few times to make sure all the extra flour comes out.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, salt, and instant coffee
- In another bowl, whisk together the water, applesauce, canola oil, molasses and vanilla extract.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the flour mixture. Use a spatula to stir the wet and dry ingredients together until completely combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, and use the spatula to smooth the batter around so it's evenly distributed.
- Put the cake in the oven to bake for about 50 minutes — and watch it closely; it can get dry if it burns.
- The cake is done when a knife or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Place the cake, in its cake pan, onto a cooling rack for about 15 minutes.
- After 15 minutes, the cake should be cool enough to remove from the pan. Run a dull knife (like a butter knife) around the edge of the pan to make sure the edges of the cake aren't stuck to the pan. Flip the pan upside down and gently slide the cake out. If you prepared the pan properly with the non-stick spray and flour, the cake should pop right out.
- Set the cake back on the cooling rack to cool for another hour before you try to frost it (frosting melts off of hot cakes.)
Make the frosting
- In the bowl of a stand-mixer (an electric beater will work fine too), combine the heavy cream, powdered sugar, powdered cocoa and vanilla extract. Beat the frosting ingredients until they whip up into a thick, heavy whipped cream.
Put the cake together
- To make a layer cake, you'll want to cut the cake in half somehow. It's also fine to eat the cake as one big layer, but I cut the cake into two layers using a cake leveler.
- I also used the cake leveler to level off the slightly-domed top of the cake. I broke these cake scraps up into "dirt" for the construction site.
- I used a pastry piping back with a big round tip to pipe a barrier around the edge of the bottom layer of cake, and then I filled the barrier with some more of the chocolate cream.
- After I'd assembled the 2 layers, I spread a thin "crumb" layer of frosting all over the cake to catch the crumbs, and then I put the whole cake in the fridge for an hour until the crumb layer was firm.
- Then, I used a spatula to frost the sides of the cake.
- Finally, I put a big dollop of whipped cream on top of the cake and spread it around with my spatula. Because this cake was supposed to be a construction site, I didn't need to worry about the frosting looking "tidy" or "neat," it was fine that I had a few rough patches.
- When decorating a cake, it always helps to remember what Bob Ross says: "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents."
- I used Raisinets and Whoppers as rocks, and Kit-Kats for "lumber." The trucks themselves are a nice set of Matchbox construction vehicles I found in Wal-Mart.
Dump truck carrying Kit-Kat lumber
