plant-based Chocolate-Red Wine CAKE with cherries // local seasonal produce
🍰🍒😋 Grandma Sita’s delicious plant-based creation by taking a traditional recipe: chocolate-red wine cake plus adding something new: cherries.
🌱 Grandma Sita’s sustainable cuisine is always tasty and baked from scratch with love. 💚
- INGREDIENTS
DRY
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unrefined cane sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
A pinch of salt
1 cup cherries (any other berry)
1/2 cup fair trade chocolate chips
WET
1/2 cup red wine or oat drink (any non-dairy milk)
1/4 cup berry jam
6 tablespoons veggie oil (any neutral flavored)
Our note: following the cups method for measurement units, we discovered that the volume of the cup is always the key, you don´t have to weigh the ingredients. A cup has the same volume of ingredients (liquid or dry) as a glass or a mug.
- METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180 º C. Oil and line the base and sides of a bread pan or square cake tin with baking parchment.
Our note: well, standard dimensions for bread and loaf pans start at 8 ½ by 4 ½ inches. It´s the perfect size for that amount of ingredients. If you multiply the amount by the number of times that you want, you will get a bigger cake. You have tons of different sizes of baking pans depending on the final amount.
2. Wash the cherries. Remove the stalks and stones from the cherries, and cut them into slices.
3. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl: sifted flour, unrefined cane sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, cherry slices, fair trade chocolate chips, baking powder, and salt until well mixed. Mix it well with a wooden spoon.
Our note: we always sift the flour for muffins and cakes. Sifting helps to combine the flour with any dry ingredients.
4. Combine wet ingredients in a bowl: red wine or oat drink, cherry jam, and veggie oil until well mixed.
5. Pour the wet mix into the dry bowl. Mix everything slowly with a wooden spoon.
6. Pour the mix into the baking pan. Add randomly the slices of cherries with sugar on the top.
7. Sprinkle unrefined cane sugar on the top. Bake for it around 40 minutes, until browned.
Our note: Don´t open the oven, you can always leave the cake in the oven for a few more minutes.
9. Remove the bread pan from the oven. Leave it to cool for a while. Carefully, peel off the paper and cool a bit on a wire rack.
10. Serve as is or with a scoop of vegan ice cream, vanilla flavor or vegan source cream, or vegan custard.
- DID YOU KNOW…
- The origins of wine predate written records, and modern archaeology is still uncertain about the details of the first cultivation of wild grapevines. Archaeological evidence has established the earliest-known production of wine from fermenting grapes during the late Neolithic site of Hajji Firuz in the northern Zagros Mountains or early Chalcolithic in the northern edge of the Middle East. | wikipedia.org
- The English word cherry derives from Old Northern French or Norman Cherise from the Latin cerasum, referring to an ancient Greek region, Kerasous (Κερασοῦς) near Giresun, Turkey, from which cherries were first thought to be exported to Europe. The indigenous range of the sweet cherry extends through most of Europe, western Asia, and parts of northern Africa, and the fruit has been consumed throughout its range since prehistoric times. A cultivated cherry is recorded as having been brought to Rome by Lucius Licinius Lucullus from northeastern Anatolia, also known as the Pontus region, in 72 BC. | wikipedia.org