How to Make Vegan Chocolate Cake using Sourdough Discard

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This Luscious Chocolate Cake is so rich and decadent, you would not believe it is Vegan, Refined Sugar-free, and made with Sourdough Discard. The flour is fermented overnight to release the nutrients, making this cake an extra healthy treat!

Is Chocolate Cake Healthy or Unhealthy?

Classic Chocolate Cake is terribly unhealthy. Not only is it made from refined sugar, butter and refined flour, but it is normally iced with a sugar and fat-rich frosting.

I think I have just named about every unhealthy ingredient under the sun.

This Chocolate Cake recipe, however, is the opposite of that. It contains no sugar or butter, and the process of overnight fermentation unlocks the nutrients in the flour.

Therefore, you can have your cake treat, and not stress out about going on a diet tomorrow, or starting an intense exercise regime. You could have this cake every night if you want too (we do!).

What makes a cake so moist and soft?

A moist, soft cake is usually that which has successfully trapped air bubbles which expand during baking to produce that fluffy texture. The ratio of wet to dry ingredients usually effects this, and it is crucial to get this ratio right for the perfect cake texture.

In this recipe, I have used oil, which is easier to use in cakes (than butter), as the fat Component. Since oil does not harden when chilled, I believe that it is the key reason that this Chocolate Cake stays so moist, even when refrigerated.

What does Sourdough Discard do for this Chocolate Cake?

The acidity of the sourdough discard also helps to tenderise the cake crumb, which gives it that lovely bouncey texture.

Sourdough Discard, fresh from the highly acidic starter, is super pungent and inhibits the gluten development in the cake. I have used it to pre-ferment the flour, which unlocks the nutrients in the flour and tenderises the cake further.

This is an utterly soft cake, and the discard is a crucial ingredient!

The Key Ingredients to a Successful Vegan Cake:

A Vegan cake cannot have any products derived from animals. This means a vegan cake cannot have eggs, butter, milk, yoghurt, or even honey!

• Oil: Oil is a plant-based fat source that keeps the cake moist, even when refrigerated.
• Baking Soda and Baking Powder: these beauties help to rise a Vegan Cake and make it fluffy and light.
• Vinegar or Lemon Juice: The acidity in the lemon and Vinegar juice react with the baking soda to exaggerate that beautiful rise and fluffiness.
• Sugar: Vegans can eat sugar, since it is derived from sugar-cane, but normally this is so refined, it makes the baking unhealthy. For a Vegan treat that is also healthy, try using a sugar alternative such as dates, erythritol and xylitol. My go-to sweetener for baking is Truvia.

Check out my other healthy desserts here!

What are the 3 Biggest Mistakes in Cake Baking?

1. Having the incorrect wet/dry ingredient ratio:

Adding too much liquid (thinking it will make a moister cake) disrupts the ratio and the cake batter will not cook correctly. It will end up gummy and take ages to bake.

Conversely, adding too much flour will make the resulting cake dry and scratchy which is also unpleasant. The best thing to do in cake baking is to follow the recipe to a T – baking is more of a science than an art (except when it comes to frosting!)

2. Over-mixing the cake batter

Remember, trapped air in cake batter is a GOOD thing – that’s what makes the baked cake so light and fluffy! These air pockets expand and wa-la, you have an utterly divine cake.

If you overbeat the batter, you destroy these crucial air pockets. The safest thing you can do for your cake is to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately, then carefully fold them at the end, to trap as many air bubbles as possible.

3. Overbake or underbake the cake

I get terribly impatient when I am waiting for my cake to bake. It takes all of my self-control not to tear open the oven door before the allotted time is up.

For this reason, I have had many an underbaked cake, and I can tell you, it ain’t pretty.

Or, maybe you belong to the camp that forgets to set the timer and walks away. An overbaked cake just tastes burnt.

The best thing to do is set the timer, and check with a skewer once it goes off. If it doesn’t come out clean, set for 5 minutes longer. Keep doing this until the skewer finally comes out clean.

What does Overnight Fermentation do for the Chocolate Cake?

There is no baking need to ferment the flour overnight. If you are in a hurry, skip this step, mix all the ingredients and bake.

What Overnight fermentation does is re-vitalise the flour and unlock the phytates which bind all the nutrients. This process tenderises the cake further and therefore makes a superior crumb.

To make the overnight ferment, you simply combine all the flour, starter, cocoa and water and mix until there are no dry bits. It will actually look a little bit like a bread dough.

Since it has the firmness of bread dough, in the morning it will need to be loosened so it can fully incorporate into the cake batter.

Do do this, you simply pour the boiling coffee over the mix. The boiling coffee melts the overnight ferment.

Using a whisk, you should then be able to loosen the dough and make it runny enough to then add to the rest of the cake ingredients.

Frosting the Cake

There’s a reason why there’s such a saying as “the Frosting on the Cake”.

The Frosting is the pièce de résistance.

No matter how wonderful, how decadent, how moist your cake crumb, it is naked without a luscious and creamy frosting.

Frosting adds an extra level of creaminess and indulgence, which typifies cake. A cake cannot rightly be called a cake without this decadence.

Indeed a cake without frosting is like a marriage without love! It just cannot happen!

A lovely Vegan Frosting recipe can be found here. I have discovered that by grinding desiccated coconut into butter, it can solidify almost any liquid, and as long as you get the ratio right, you can have a luscious, cheese-cakey frosting layer.

For this chocolate frosting, I did not have coconut cream on hand (but that would have been divine, as chocolate and coconut do really well together), so I used my homemade yoghurt instead.

While this is definitely not a Vegan Frosting (stick with the coconut cream for that), it did make a lighter frosting layer that had a little bit of tanginess, akin to a classic cream cheese icing. Plus, using yoghurt is even cheaper for me than using coconut cream (although that too is a frugal vegan frosting option!).

How big is this Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cake?

This Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cake cake makes a decent 22cm sized cake. If you have 2 smaller tins, then that would be a faster way to bake this large batter, plus you have your layers neatly done for you.

Otherwise, it copes extremely well with being baked for longer in a 22cm cake tin, and sawn in half (when cool) and lavishly frosted. Because the cake crumb is so bouncy, it is resilient to knife work (and doesn’t completely fall apart).

How to Serve the Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cake

I tackily garnished this cake with M and M’s, which were absolutely delicious.

This cake is so versatile and would be equally as lovely with berries, ganache and cream.

The whipped cream is always a must, and I am not satisfied unless the cake is fully buried beneath a layer of pillowy white cloud (not pictured, of course).

How to Store this Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cake

Because of the oil, this cake stores really well in the fridge without drying out. I love that I do not have to worry about ants getting to it (which would be a risk if I had to store it in the cupboard).

Plus, if you have an icing that needs to be refrigerated in order to stay good, then be comforted that the cake will bear up well to this.

It is a lovely, moist cake, spongy and deliciously sweet.