Play-date chocolate cake

My little reception-aged daughter is very, very excited today. She has the little girl who she’d most like to be friends with coming round for a play after school. This is big stuff. So, to give them a snack that they’ll hopefully all like (and to use up the leftover buttercream from the iced gemys), I decided to make a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. It’s a new cake recipe for me, pointed out by Ali from The Beech Cafe (sorry, but I really can’t remember the name of the book it comes from). I should have made double the recipe for an impressive double layer cake, but splitting the single layer and filling it worked perfectly well. I hope they enjoy it, and here’s to a happy and successful play…

Play-date Chocolate Cake (dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, vegetarian, vegan, can be soya-free)

Makes one 20cm round cake, double the recipe for a double layer cake

• 175g self-raising flour
• 25g cocoa powder (M&S do a dairy-free one)
• 100g caster sugar
• 100ml sunflower oil
• 150ml soya milk (could use oat milk)
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 pinch of salt

– Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade

– Grease and line the base of a cake tin

– Sift together the flour and cocoa and stir in the sugar and salt

– In a separate bowl combine the soya milk, bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice and sit for a little while to curdle. Add the oil.

– Stir the wet ingredients into the dry, until smooth

– Pour in to the cake tin and bake for approx. 30 mins until a knife comes out clean.

– Let cool in the tin. Once cold turn out onto a wire rack.

– Ice if desired. I used the remaining buttercream from the Super size iced gemys

– I decorated with a pile of Whizzers