"Perfectly Chocolate" Eggless Chocolate Cake

I get excited to do cakes and cakes that call for very little fat. This is a delicious chocolate cake with no butter and no eggs.. Gayathri chose this delicious and very famous Hershey’s chocolate cake for this month’s Eggless Baking Group. It is a very easy cake to do. I halved the recipe and got a 9 inch round single layer cake. It is very interesting and new to me of adding boiling water to the cake batter and I searched the internet as to how that helps. Here are some of the answers I got – from webfoodpros – “ Cocoa powder consists of a small amount of cocoa butter and the boiling water helps separate the cocoa butter out of the cocoa mass and emulsify it into the batter.“ Kingarthur’s website says  - “boiling water added to cocoa will help bloom the chocolate and impart more flavor“.  The cake was very moist and very delicate and I was so happy with the intense chocolate flavor. The next time I do this, I would do lesser sugar

Ingredients
Vegetable Oil - 1/4 cup
Boiling Water - 1/2 cup
Baking Soda - 3/4 tea spoon
All Purpose Flour - 3/4 Cup + 2 table spoons
Baking Powder - 3/4 tea spoon
Milk - 1/2 cup (Can use Almond milk to make it Vegan)
Salt - 1/2 tea spoon
Cocoa Powder - 1/4 cup + 2 table spoons(I used Dutch processed)
Sugar - 1 cup
Flax Seed Powder - 1 table spoon
Luke Warm water - 3 table spoons
Vanilla - 1 tea spoon
Pecans - 1/3 cup (optional)
For Decoration / Frosting
White Chocolate Ganache – 1 cup (Recipe coming soon)
Chocolate shavings – 1/2 cup
Cherries – 12 - 15
Method
Grease and flour a 9 inch round pan and set aside
Whisk together flax seed powder and Luke warm water and set aside for 3 minutes. Now whisk it vigorously until it becomes gooey
Roast the pecans in microwave for 30 seconds to a minute and set aside
Sieve together flour, baking powder and baking soda and add salt
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Add flax seed mixture, oil, vanilla and milk and beat on medium speed for a minute
Add the boiling water (batter will be thin – see picture below) and pecans. Pour into the prepared pan
Bake it in the preheated oven for 25 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Mine was done in 30 minutes
Allow it to cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes and run a knife through the edges and transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely

You can relish it as is or frost it. I chose to frost it with White chocolate ganache (recipe coming soon) and chocolate shavings. You could also frost it with buttercream frosting or chocolate frosting

Sending this to my guest host event What is with my Cuppa,