Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake
Written by joythebaker on July 15, 2009 – 8:44 am -
Ok… first of all, stop looking at me like that.
Yea, I can see that crazy look of your face. But it’s me. The same person that brought you amazing Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls and Perfect Lemon Pound Cake. We trust each other. We have an understanding. Just go with me on this.
Something about hot summer weather gets me to thinking (or melts my brain) and brings some strange recipes to the surface. Remember last year’s Blueberry Ice Cream with Homemade Hot Fudge? Yea… I got a few strange looks for that too.
Because I still see those raised eyebrows on your face, let me tell you a little about this beast of a cake. Believe me, I was super skeptical too.
The vegan chocolate cake is dense and moist, and everything you might want from a chocolate cake minus the eggs and butter. The fat in the cake is almond oil (or anything you have on hand) and one whole mashed avocado. It’s lovely, and I didn’t taste a lick of avocado in the cake.
The avocado buttercream is a dash more strange. Yes, it’s bright green. Yes, the only fat in the buttercream is avocado meat. It’s sweet with slight hints of citrus. I had my doubts, but when combined with the chocolate cake… holy wow! It actually worked! It was honest-to-goodness delicious! Not to mention vegan and full of healthy fats!
Your thoughts? Have I scared you off?
Vegan Chocolate Cake with Avocado
makes 2 8-inch rounds or 2 thinner 9-inch rounds
from Vegetarian in the Middle East
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used almond oil)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8 or 9-inch rounds. Set aside.
Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar. Set that aside too.
Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado.
Add sugar into the wet mix and stir.
Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth.
Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting with avocado buttercream.
Avocado Buttercream Frosting
from Alton Brown
8 ounces of avocado meat, about 2 small to medium, very ripe avocados
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Peel and pit the soft avocados. It’s important to use the ripest avocados you can get your hands on. If the avocados have brown spots in the meat, avoid those spots when you scoop the meat into the bowl.
Place the avocado meat into the bowl of a stand mixer fit with the whisk attachment. Add lemon juice and whisk the avocado on medium speed, until slightly lightened in color and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.
Add the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat. Add vanilla extract until combined. If not using right away, store in the refrigerator. Don’t worry. It won’t turn brown!
Tags: avocado, buttercream, cake, Chocolate, healthy, Vegan
Posted in Cakes, Chocolate, Fruit, In the Kitchen, Recipes, Vegan | 185 Comments »
Made this cake and it tastes great! Did not like the frosting though.. at all.. but the cake is DELICIOUS!
I made this for a dinner party and it was great! I loved the cake and you are absolutely right that you can’t taste the avocado. The icing was a bit sweet and a little was all you needed. I would definitely make this again. Thanks for the recipe!
[...] sale, and it had been sitting pretty in the fridge, perfectly ripe. so of course, I thought of this recipe. hehehe. chuckled to myself. I hate using a mixer, and it’s simply not feasible to cream a [...]
this was quite delicious. the frosting was very refreshing. i really appreciated a new egg free and butter free recipe, as my mother-in-law is allergic to both eggs and cream. she really enjoyed it. if anyone has any other great recipes that might work for her i’d be most thankful.
i love both chocolate and avocado. I didn’t have a chance to make it yet. i made avocado milkshake before and loved it so i think i will love this as well. you also give me the idea of doing an avocado cream cheese frosting. i think they may go great together. thanks joy! great photos by the way ^ ^
This is phenomenal!! I made this last night and brought it in the work for a birthday. It stayed just fine in my basement over night and actually seemed to firm up a bit. I frosted it a bit warm and it still turned out late. I made a snowflakeish design on top with chocolate chips to liven it up. My frosting turned out much darker green then the photo and a bit thinner, but still delicious. How did you get your frosting to be so light green?
I too think I may try an avocado cream cheese frosting down the road.
Oops…above, I meant it still turned out “great” when frosted warm. Cake update- I wasn’t sure how the cake would go over at work, but it was gone by noon!
made it and LOVE IT.
my love of chocolate and avocados, combined!
does this count as healthy now?
Oh I just made it !! lovely!! http://sweesan.blogspot.com/2009/08/oh-what-joy-to-bake.html
I told my mom about this recipe, and she made it for a family party last night! It was actually really, really good. The cake was quite dense and didn’t taste much different from a regular chocolate cake, but the frosting was a bit more unusual tasting. And the colors… oh my were they lovely! My leftover slice was looking a bit iffy this morning, though. I’m thinking it should have gone in the fridge. :/ Thanks, Joy!
this cake was heavenly but how did you make it look that good?!
ohmygosh.
i am a REALLY new baker, and i’ve already baked two of your recipes, have seriously LOVED them, and am so excited and am going to the store tomorrow with my mom to buy more ingredients to make more! i’m 16, and reading your recipes and thoughts is so exciting, and baking with you is the best! thanks a bunch Joy!
:]
I made this cake. I think I messed up the frosting, because it turned out soooo thick and pasty. I think I accidentally put in twice as much powdered sugar. Oops! Unfortunately the frosting made the whole thing… not so good, so the poor cake didn’t even get to be enjoyed. Maaaaybe I’ll try it again.
I made this for my sad vegan friend and it made her happy again.
Thank-you Joy
Hey, I tried this recipe and it was seriously extremely delicious! I made it for a little boy that I babysit who is allergic to milk and eggs (how sad), anyway, thanks for sharing this!!
I’ll have to keep this in mind for my mom’s birthday. It’s got 2 of her fave things – chocolate and avocado!
I just made two of these cakes, one for my mother in law and one for me. They tasted lovely. The icing came out a bit thin but the cake is moist and full of flavour. I didn’t know you could make such a great cake without eggs. Yummy!
I have to make this, not because I am thinking HOLY COW THIS LOOKS DELICIOUS, more because I am thinking there are so many things that seem wrong with this I have to find out for myself. The recipe has been booked marked and I will be trying it in the near future.
This cake is delicious!!! to be honest i wasnt sure at first about doing it…but then i remenbered how good were all the other recipes i have made from you. It was great…even my husband who hates avocados said it was great. Thanks Joy.
This was great! I used this recipe for a recent family birthday gathering with vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters. The cake itself was fantastic and the icing was really good too. I had to make a little extra icing because my cake just didn’t look as pretty and artsy as the picture and it needed to be iced all over. Make sure to use vanilla extract for the icing. I had just run out and used almond extract instead and the icing tasted just like kiwi fruit, which was good, but a little weird. But when I made the extra icing I had vanilla extract and that made it taste just like vanilla icing! The cake and icing got rave reviews from about 14 people.
[...] threw an indoor picnic in Ottawa. They baked the Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake and wore super cute dresses. What more could you want!? [...]
Ooooh, I bookmarked this the moment I saw it; just getting to writing a comment now. But, I love avocado in sweet applications. In fact, I prefer them that way! So yeah, big-time drool on this one! Am not really a baker but one of these days, I’ll get around to making this. =)
(BTW, your picnic looked super fun!)
[...] avocados, I think the creaminess would have come through, and not so much the flavor. Anywho, here is the recipe if y’all want to see how DELICIOUS it looks and attempt it [...]
could i make these into cupcakes? I love the idea, i mean chocolate and avocado are two of my favorite things.
I made a half-recipe of this for my grandparents over the weekend and we all really liked it. The texture of the cake came out to something reminiscent of banana or zucchini bread, that moist denseness. It was very good. The avocados I was able to buy weren’t quite ripe enough for the “buttercream,” though… It tasted a little underripe and didn’t cream very well. I think with very ripe fruit, as called for, it would be a success. It was something different that the grandparents especially appreciated. Thanks
[...] got your attention with the title didn’t I? When I first heard about this cake and saw it on Joy the Baker, I was intrigued so I decided to make this for my husband’s birthday. He had a rotten [...]
oh my gosh, this is so weird and cool. my mom is going to go crazy when i give her a slice of this!
[...] afternoon I made a chocolate avocado cake. I’m not vegan, but I found this recipe on Joy the Baker’s blog and the curiosity of baking with this healthier fat source instead of [...]
I needed a cake for a potluck and knew you would have the perfect thing. Yes, I made this cake for unsuspecting friends and had them guess what was in it. Nobody could. Some thought that the frosting tasted like kiwi or banana but no one figured it out. The whole thing turned out perfectly and looked just like your photos… I love that! The cake looks more chocolate-y than it tastes, so I would love to find a way to get more chocolate in there. Everyone was impressed though, and there was none left at the end of the evening… so thank you for once again making me look good! You rock!
Comments/suggestions on substituting dark chocolate cocoa powder for the unsweetened cocoa powder??
you know… i’m pretty sure that i just used unsweetened cocoa powder for this recipe. the dark chocolate part is confusing and misleading… sorry about that. unsweetened cocoa powder is the way to go!
Help!
but I desperately want to bake this cake! 
maybe some other fruit?? help please ;(
could someone suggest what I can use instead of avocato in the cake batter?? I can’t get avocado
thank to those who’ll try to give me a hand
As the parent of a budding vegan, this looks like it just might do the trick for her sweet tooth!
[...] used a recipe for a chocolate cake that just happened to have avocado in it, and I found the recipe here. I simply substituted fresh orange juice instead of the water that the original recipe called for, [...]