Okay, I didn’t call my Flourless Chocolate Cake with Whipped Cream the best. Someone else did…
The Praise
When my new long-distance friend and fellow (amazing) Vegan Heritage Press cookbook author, Bryanna Clark Grogan (World Vegan Feast and others), was helping me test the recipes for this dessert, she served it to friends, one of whom said, “This is the best ——- cake I’ve ever eaten!” That’s good enough for me! And I trust it will be for you too.
The Back Story
Back in my pre-vegan years in Nashville, I did some moonlighting as a catering assistant for my dear friend Monica Holmes at her award winning Clean Plate Club. She made what can only be described as a transcendent Flourless Chocolate Cake. Since this type of cake contains no flour, the batter relies on eggs for structure and lift.
I knew there had to be a way to veganize it, but the recipes I’d researched, including from people I respect in the field, looked and sounded like vegan chocolate cheesecakes made with tofu or they contained beans and appeared a bit dry with a crackly top, or they actually included some flour. I’m sure all are delicious, but they aren’t what I wanted.
I wanted something as dense, moist, silky and rich as the original. And that’s what I got, but not until I had baked the cake about 5 times (and made the cream about 7)! At least. The first try was an unmitigated disaster. But it had potential, and that just spurred me on to redouble my efforts. Meanwhile, the generous Bryanna, in British Columbia, was doing the same with the recipe revisions I’d send her, and we were comparing notes. Bry, I love you for many reasons, including your help with this feat o’ chocolate and cream!
My version of the cake is, indeed, based on tofu, but it has some “secret” ingredients responsible for its fabulousness which you are sure not to confuse with cheesecake. It’s its own brand of wonderful.
The Revolutionary Whipped Cream
And the cream, well, it is truly revolutionary. At least, I could find no similar recipes online. As you can see in the photo, it is a beautiful thing to behold. Plus, it is fat-free, cholesterol-free, soy-free, gluten-free (if your extracts are gluten-free), and low calorie! Not only that, but it is delicious and a breeze to make.
For a very long time, I had been thinking that there had to be a way to make homemade vegan whipped cream from one of the vegan creamers. I love both savory and sweet cashew cream, but it is a little heavy and thick, calorie laden, and distinctively flavored. Ditto coconut cream aerated in one of those n2o cartridge-powered whippers.
My cream is delicious with a creamy-fluffy, even billowy texture, and a more neutral flavor (but by neutral, I don’t mean bland!). You will love it on all of your desserts that call for a whipped topping. The base is coconut milk creamer. But can you guess the secret ingredient that makes the magic happen? Funny story about the coconut milk creamer: I purchased it, disappointed that my grocery store was out of soymilk creamer. But what a happy accident! It turns out that the recipe ONLY works with the coconut milk creamer. With soymilk creamer, you get something akin to pastry cream instead.
The Recipe and Thanks to VegNews
Many thanks to the brilliantly talented and generous food editors et al at VegNews for publishing these recipes in “What’s Cooking” online. Please click right HERE to be taken directly to their site for both. And while you’re there, if you haven’t already, enjoy all the good things VegNews offers its readers on a daily basis.
Happy Thanksgiving
I’m posting this recipe now just in case you, like me, are offering chocolate for the first time for Thanksgiving. But, personally, I think the winter holidays are the dessert’s time to shine, dressed up with a little pomegranate seed bling, as in the photo, or a bit of crushed peppermint. In the summer, it has to be raspberries.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
November 18, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Congratulations, Betsy! I can personally attest to 1.) how much work you put into this; 2.) how amazingly good both recipes are (and how, together, they make a dynamite dessert!); and 3.) how easy both recipes are to make (but your guests will not know that!)
November 18, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Bryanna, I couldn’t have done it without your equal amount of work! Love ‘ya!
November 20, 2012 at 4:32 pm
OMG, Betsy! Just reading this description has my mouth watering. Sounds genius! I can’t wait to try it.
November 23, 2012 at 6:03 am
Thank you, Lee! Have you had a chance to “test drive” it yet? I’d love your opinion!
July 12, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Great recipe thanks for sharing! A soy-free version would be even more wonderful.
July 13, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Thanks, Ikeke! So glad you liked it. The whipped cream is soy-free, as soy creamer was a bust! But I couldn’t figure out how to get the texture of a true flourless chocolate cake without using tofu. You didn’t say if you have a soy allergy or if you try to avoid soy for other health reasons. So, I’m not sure if this will help, but my mother had read some of soy’s bad press and shared it with me. Not too long after–probably about 3 years ago–I had the good fortune to enjoy lunch with Dr. Neal Bernard of Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine and Ingrid Newkirk of PETA (I was in the presence of greatness and it was a bit intimidating!). So, I asked him about it and he shared what he acknowledged is a very simplified layman’s analogy of how phytoestrogens, like soy, work for GOOD in the body: he said to imagine an airport terminal with small jets sitting at all of the gates preventing big incoming airbus-type jets from accessing the gates. In this analogy, the terminal is our body, the small jets the soy/phytoestrogens, and the big airbuses the harmful estrogen. In effect, the phytoestrogens prevent the latter from attaching to our bodies. Unless his thinking has changed or been refuted very recently, that is the assumption under which I operate. I’m 52, eat quite a bit of soy, and am very grateful to be extremely healthy and fit!
October 10, 2017 at 9:10 pm
sorry, not a fan. I love bittersweet chocolate, but this was not sweet enough. It also had the consistency of pudding. That’s not a bad thing, but its a complicated recipe for pudding. I think I’ll stick with my chocolate – date – coconut milk recipe. I couldn’t taste the dates or avocado though, which for my kids is a good thing. 😉
October 10, 2017 at 9:21 pm
Hmmm…it is definitely very sliceable when I make it, as you can see in the photo. And, in fact, it is a spot-on replica of the dairy-based flourless chocolate cake I used to love. Perhaps our oven temps are not in sync?
But, if I’ve learned anything, it is that everyone’s palate is as distinctive as they are. It was plenty sweet enough for me. And I’m not a big fan of the calories in a lot of the date and avocado desserts. (Plus, I’m allergic to avocado.) So, it is nice that we all have options we enjoy.